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No. 695 Paul Jlrene 50 Cents 


Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter. Issued Monthly. Subscription Price per Year, 12 Nos., $5.00. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 

^ Nouel 

BY 

PAUL ARENE 


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 

n 

MARY J. SAFFORD 

ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

April, 1891 


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o 


TIIE 

GOLDEN GOAT 



BY 

C<z>-LC 

paul ; <arEne 


TRANSLATED FROM TIIE FRENCH BY 

MARY J. SAFFORD 





NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1891 


1 I/O t 1 — 


T2L-> 
, A c? g \ 



Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers. 


All rights reserved. 



To Doctor JEAN MARTIN CHARCOT 


In memory of our journey through the radiant land of Provence 
permit me, dear master and dear friend, to dedicate to you 
“ THE GOLDEN GOAT” This little fantasy has nothing 
to do with nervous diseases ; perhaps, for that very reason, it 
will please you 

P. A, 



































































THE GOLDEN GOAT 


i 

LETTER OF ADVICE 

“ Laugh away, beloved friend and philosopher !” 

I can see you, now, reading these lines in the se- 
clusion of your luxurious study, cumbered with the 
spoils of the ages, where, like a Faust turned collector 
of curios, you pass through the crucible of modern 
science whatever mysteries are still left to mankind ; 
that study where, amid ancient pictures and statues, 
enamels and tapestries, you consume your days, im- 
pelled, by some paradoxical and insatiate longing for 
truth, to reduce to profitless vapor the illusions of 
that very past whose image still remains your only 
satisfaction. .Nay, I can imagine the smile of ironical 
compassion which, after a moment, will illumine your 
features, clear cut as the profile on one of your fa- 
vorite coins. 

The same man you have always known me to be, 
sceptical, cured of lofty enthusiasms, and disinclined 


2 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


to hope, I am very earnestly occupied in the search 
for a treasure. 

Yes ; here in Provence, in a land all light and beau- 
tiful reality, cloudless horizons, luminous nights un- 
haunted by visions, I am having, broad awake, the 
most marvellous of dreams. 

Folly! you are going to say. Keep calm. Your 
wisdom will soon perceive that, on the contrary, I 
must become mad to renounce my folly. For the 
treasure in question is a real and tangible one, which 
has been buried more than a thousand years— a gen- 
uine golden treasure, with nothing chimerical about 
it. Though comparable to the heaps of precious jew- 
els and shimmering gems which dazzled popular im- 
agination in the days of the Arabian Kiglits and the 
Caliphs, no Djinn guards it, and it will soon be mine. 

How ? Let me keep the secret another week. 

Yet, with you in mind, I have jotted on paper, at 
first to occupy my leisure moments, afterwards to 
while away my impatience, an exact record of my sen- 
sations and adventures since the day we parted. You 
will receive the packet with this letter. A complete 
little romance, whose plot was woven solely by cir- 
cumstances on which my will had no influence. The 
incident of the treasure comes in rather late. I will 
send you the sequel, and you will thus be able to share 
the emotions I am experiencing. Meanwhile, be in- 
dulgent to my chimera. 

To prove that I am lucid, and that the mania for 
grandeur has not turned my brain, I assure you that 
I will soon laugh with you — nay, even more heartily 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


3 


than you — over my discomfiture if, awakening at the 
last stroke of the pickaxe, I find, as in the fairy tales, 
instead of the hoped-for Colchis and Golconda, only a 
worm-eaten coffer, some pebbles and withered leaves. 


II 


ON THE .TOURNEY 

Here I am, far away. Let us sum up wliat lias 
happened. 

The balance-sheet is a simple matter. Love affairs, 
or would-be love affairs, which have afforded me no 
happiness ; eager toil, which has brought me no glory ; 
friendships, yours excepted, which have all, in fading, 
left a chill in my heart, blended with the dull sense 
of rage roused by the humiliation of knowing that I 
am duped. 

In short, I find myself again just where I started, 
minus faith in the future and that precious faculty of 
being deluded which alone renders life endurable. I 
recall to mind nothing save a fortune greatly dimin- 
ished, without even being able to plead the excuse of 
any creditable folly. 

A moment ago I felt this very distinctly in my 
cheerless hotel- chamber, wdiile listening to the strik- 
ing of the city clock. 

Through an accident by no means singular, this 
clock, in the middle of the night, struck the hour of 
my birth, while, in the absence of a calendar, a birth- 
day bouquet, a gift from a fair friend of too faithful 


T1IE GOLDEN GOAT 


5 


memory, told me, with cruel kindness, the number of 
my forty years. Had it not the same shrill, clear 
sound as the silver clock in the palace of Avignon, 
which struck only at the death of the Popes ? 

It seemed as if something in my own soul had just 
died. 

What shall I resolve? To become a pessimist? 
Certainly not ! I should be too much afraid of your 
searching banter. 

After all, I am no longer rich ; but I have enough 
left to live in comfort. I am no longer young, but 
there are still half a score of years between the man I 
see in yonder mirror and old age. It is too late to 
think of glory; but work, even without glory, has its 
Iffty joys. 

So, since I had not the genius to be a creator, per- 
haps some endeavor in the domain of science, a series 
of researches clearly defined and boldly pursued, will 
rid me of the disheartening doubts which have so 
often made me drop the tool from my hands midway 
in my task, while engaged in enterprises too purely 
imaginative not to seem, at certain moments, hollow 
and chimerical to the logician and coward chance has 
made of me. 

After having searched and pondered, I have de- 
cided on a task suited to my courage and to my 
tastes. 

You know — if I may be permitted to use an expres- 
sion which you like and, indeed, I believe, partially 
invented — what a frantic tvciditionist I am. 

An exile amid the environments of modern society, 


6 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


I possess the infirmity of taking no interest in any-' 
thing, unless I find the golden thread that unites it to 
the past. My feeling, moreover, may be defended ; 
the future being closed to us, our sole means of intel- 
ligently prolonging our few years of existence lies in 
recalling the past to life. 

You know, too — for you have often rallied me 
concerning a vague barbaric atavism, which, scoffing 
scholar, you attributed to me — you know what a weak- 
ness I have always had for the relics of Arabian civ- 
ilization. 

In this beautiful region where, above the ancient 
Ligurian tufa, so many peoples — Phoenicians, Phocians, 
Latins — have left the impress of their race and lan- 
guage, the last-comers alone, the Arabs, interest me. 

The Greek girl, whose blue-gray eyes, veiled by 
long black lashes, evoke the vision of some peasant 
Cypris, the Roman whose proud patrician pallor you 
often admire, charm me far less than the lithe, slen- 
der Saracen, with scarlet lips and skin of amber tint, 
met at the turn of some path. And while others feel 
their hearts throb at the discovery of a fragment of 
an antique urn or the hand of a goddess yellowed by 
the sun, I was never so much moved as when one day 
in Nimes, near Diana’s Baths, whose masonry is van- 
ishing under a mass of roses, I found among the ruins 
a carved sunken marble ceiling which African and 
Spanish invaders had artlessly added to the Ionian 
ornaments of the temple of the nymphs. 

We welcomed as friends in our country the chival- 
rous silk-robed adventurers who, amid the harshness 


THE GOt/DEN GOAT 


7 


of the Middle Ages, brought us the grace and the arts 
of the Orient. When the conquered Arabs re-em- 
barked all Provence wept, as Blanche de Simiane 
mourned the departure of her handsome emir. 

I began a work on this subject once — a work, alas, 
too quickly interrupted — and very opportunely find 
again a yellow memorandum- book, many of whose 
pages remained white. I shall revive these long-for- 
gotten notes while finishing them. I shall begin again 
my endless rambles beneath a sky like that of the 
East, over these half- African rocks where grow the 
palm-free and the Barbary fig, along these blue ca- 
lanques* so favorable to landing, these beaches in 
whose yellow sand the prows of the galleys sunk. 

Happy the evening, and the day well spent, if I 
discover the name of some family or place whose con- 
sonance tells its origin, if I see in the sunset near the 
sea, on a hill-top, some white village with an ancient 
Saracen tower still retaining its battlements and the 
projecting stones of its moucharaby. 

In this hospitable country, so indulgent to unskilful 
sportsmen, a gun on my shoulder will give me access 
to the peasants. 

The unsalaried and somewhat indefinite mission 
your friendship obtained from the ministry will se- 
cure me a welcome from the local scholars, cures, and 
school-teachers, and enable me to search the old rec- 
ords of taxes, the land-registers, and residuum of the 
archives. 


* Little creeks on the edge of the sea. 


8 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Then, after a month or two of this study in the 
open air, I hope to bring you back, if not important 
discoveries, at least a bronzed and vigorous friend in 
the place of the ultra-nervous Parisian whom you sent 
to renew body and brain in the sunshine. 



Ill 

THE LITTLE CAMARGUE 

But, before beginning the campaign, before carry- 
ing all these fine projects into execution, I shall need 
a few days to collect my thoughts. Suppose I ask 
Skipper Ruf’s hospitality. No doubt he is still alive. 
AVe were intimate for four years, and this is the way 
I made his acquaintance. 

I was travelling along the coast from Marseilles to 
Nice, when one evening, not very far from here, in 
the neighborhood of Esterel, my attention was at- 
tracted by a rustic dwelling whose oddity interested 
me. 

At the foot of a perpendicular rock stood one of 
the low cottages peculiar to the delta of the Rhone, 


10 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


cottages built of beaten earth and reeds, whose white- 
washed, peaked roofs give them so characteristic an 
aspect. 

Evidently the rock once plunged into the sea, but 
the heaping up of the sands swept there by the cur- 
rents and the alluvium of a little river, whose slug- 
gish waters, spread at the mouth into sleeping lagoons, 
have gradually converted the primitive bay into a 
stretch of salt ooze intersected here and there by 
plashes of water, where grew marine grasses, a few 
rushes, and tamarisks. 

To find in the midst of Levantine Provence a min- 
iature Camargue and its watchman’s cottage had al- 
ready surprised me ; but my amazement reached its 
height when I perceived, mending nets before the 
door, a woman dressed in the Camarguen costume. 

At my approach the husband came out. I greeted 
him with a Provencal “ good-day.” At the end of 
ten minutes we were the best friends in the world. 

Ruf Ganteaume, more commonly called Skipper 
Ruf, was compromised in 1851 by having aided with 
his boat the escape of some rebellious soldiers, and got 
off cheaply, escaping Cayenne and Lambessa, by an 
imprisonment in the vicinity of Arles. 

More lucky than others, since he could earn his liv- 
ing on the Rhone as a fisherman, he married, and after 
the amnesty returned to the country, bringing with 
him a beautiful girl named Tardif, one of the Tardifs 
of Fourques, whom he continued to call Tardive. 

Ruf and Tardive had a son, whom they wanted to 
introduce to me. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


11 


“Ganteaume! Ganteaume !” they called. I ex- 
pected a sturdy fellow already tanned by sun and 
sea. I saw emerge from a clump of tamarisks a shy, 
unkempt boy ten years old, holding by the legs a huge 
frog lie had just captured. It was the heir, the bearer 
of the family name, Ganteaume. 

I succeeded in taming Ganteaume, and lived with 
these worthy people a whole week. I promised that 
they should hear from me, but did not keep my 
word. Will they recognize me after the lapse of 
four years? 

They did recognize me, and I have found every- 
thing in the same condition. 

The cottage is always new, for ftuf puts on a fresh 
roof of reeds every autumn, and Tardive — Ganteaume 
carrying the pail of diluted lime — whitewashes the 
walls and roof every Saturday, according to Arlesian 
custom. 

By way of change, there are a few more wrinkles in 
the old sailor’s sajt-incrusted face, and a few silver 
threads in Tardive’s Grecian bandeaux. 

Ganteaume, who has grown rapidly, is now a fine 
lad with fair curling locks, which will soon darken 
into brown. Ganteaume no longer catches frogs. 
When he isn’t at sea he mounts Arlatan, a Camar- 
guais stallion, white as chalk and quick as powder, 
which his father h^d brought, equipped with braided 
horse-hair harness, heavy stirrups, and high saddle, 
from Fourques, whither he had gone on business con- 
nected with a legacy. 

I shall soon be settled. Ganteaume, who is to sleep 


12 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


with his parents, gives up his room ; it seems as though 
it had been waiting for me. 

In honor of my arrival we dined off a bouillabaisse* 
made of fish caught by Iiuf himself, and served, ac- 
cording to custom, on a piece of the bark of a cork- 
tree, slightly hollowed like a barbaric buckler. Each 
of us had for a plate half a pearl-shell, huge mussels 
these, with glints of silver and mahogany color, torn 
from the reefs in the gulf with great effort, by means 
of ropes knotted in running nooses lowered from the 
boats. 

But for this thoroughly local detail of the plates 
and the dish I might have believed myself, with 
that horizon of flashing waves, with the lace-like foli- 
age of the tamarisks outlined against the golden rays 
of the setting sun, and the tinkling bells of Arlatan ; 
but for these, I say, I might have believed myself in 
some secluded nook on the shore of Yaccares, be- 
tween the tower of Saint-Louis and the Saintes. 

The surf was beating behind the dunes. 

Tardive, beautiful in her modest pride, talked to 
me until midnight of her happiness ; Ganteaume was 
asleep ; Ruf smoked silently, and I admired the un- 
conscious poet who, to secure his wife’s love and hap- 
piness, had made a new native land for her on a bit 
of earth heaped up by the sea and the waters of a 
stream. 

* A kind of fish-soup, cooked with onions, oil, and saffron, and served 
with slices of bread. 



Skipper Ruf really supports himself by catching 
fish, which Tardive, mounted on Arlatan, goes to the 
city two or three times a week to sell. But his pride 
lies in being a coral-fisher. 

One doesn’t become a coral-fisher by mere wishing. 
The title is transmitted from father to son, and the 
members of the association, once admitted, swear to 
keep the secret. 

The calling would seem to be as comfortless as that 

2 


14 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


of the “prentice cabin-boy.” Ruf went through his 
apprenticeship, spending whole days in the bottom of 
the boat, while the crew, before casting a drag-net into 
the depths, are on the watch — in order to find the 
best places — for some marked rock, some ensignadon * 
of the coast, and scarcely take breath until the even- 
ing, when, the day’s work over and the boat moored, 
water is to be found, wood collected, and the bouilla- 
baisse made. 

Ruf had been initiated at sixteen, and even now, 
when the summer months came, Satan himself would 
not have prevented his joining his comrades’ fleet at 
Cape d’ Antibes. Mysterious expeditions these, in 
which provisions for two or three days were carried, 
and the boats made a pretence of sailing for Genoa, 
Corsica, and Sardinia, though in fact they were rarely 
out of sight of land. 

June approaching, Skipper Ruf talks of starting, 
this time to take Ganteaume with him. 

But Tardive wants to keep the lad, and this is their 
sole dispute. 

Meanwhile Ruf has taken me for a mate. Every 
morning we put out to cast the gangui , f or stretch 
the palangrottes. J 

Yesterday the sea suddenly grew rough. The mis- 
tral was blowing, and we were obliged to tack on re- 
turning home. 

Skipper Ruf silently held the tiller. Ganteaume, 

* Promontory. \ Net dragged by a boat. 

\ Long fish-line, whose hook lies on the bottom. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


15 


running barefoot along the gunwale, attended entire- 
ly to the sails and ropes. And while the huge bil- 
lows, sluggish and dull, unflecked by foam, rolled in 
the sunlight like molten lead, I, a useless passenger^ 
amused myself by watching the barren coast, the hills 
rising gradually or sinking one behind the other as 
in tacking, we drew nearer to the shore, or stood out 
to sea. 

A white spot glittered in the sunshine at the top 
of a cliff. 

“Is that a village ?” I asked. > 

“Puget,” replied Ruf, without removing his pipe. 

“ Puget-Maure !” added Ganteaume. 

The appearance of the place and its Saracenic name 
excited my scientific curiosity. I should have liked 
to obtain further particulars, but Skipper Ruf, vexed 
by a wrong turn of the helm, remained obstinately 
silent and, in spite of my impatience, I was forced to 
wait till his good -humor returned with the fair 
weather. 

To-day the wind has risen. 

Ruf and I sit talking on the cagnard , between two 
mounds of warm sand, where, on the days when the 
mistral blows, bits of mica glisten in the bright sun- 
shine. Tardive is cooking down yonder, while Gan- 
teaume runs along the shore, picking up, to show me, 
shells, cuttle-fish bones, pumice-stones, and tufts of 
algae matted into brown balls, flung up amid flakes of 
foam by the angry sea. 


* A sunny, sheltered spot, 


16 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Our conversations are usually on the subject of 
politics. 

Ruf, solemn and closely shaven, with the bearing 
of a Latin, is more than ever in favor of the repub- 
lic. Paris occupies much of his attention; he ad- 
mires her great men, and having little to read, except 
a dilapidated old copy of Plutarch , imagines the city 
to be* like Rome or Athens. In his hut is a plaster 
cast of Marianne, whom in all seriousness he calls the 
goddess, and which forms a pendant to a “ Saint Mar- 
tha conquering the Tarasque,” brought by Tardive 
from Arles. On fete-days Tardive divides her flow- 
ers between Saint Martha and Marianne. Sometimes 
she rebels. 

“Pshaw! what more can your republic give us? 
Haven’t we a house, a good boat, a handsome son ?” 

To which Skipper Ruf replies : 

“Everybody isn’t like us. There are poor people 
in the great cities. Women don’t understand; but 
the glory of the republic lies in improving the con- 
dition of the poor.” 

For once, however, we let politics alone. Still 
thinking of yesterday’s voyage, I again referred to 
the village of Puget-Maure, so strangely located on its 
lofty perch, a distant glimpse of which I had caught. 

; “ It’s a queer idea to want to lose yourself in that 
paradise of adders. Puget is no longer even a village. 
I don’t say it wasn’t a century ago; but since that 
time everything good up yonder — land and people — 
has come down into the valley. The rock alone re- 
mains, with about twenty families, who pretend to 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


17 


cultivate what the rain has left in the hollows. And 
such .families ! People with gypsy faces, who marry 
solely among themselves — from pride, they say, but it’s 
from poverty, too. The whole ill-favored troop would 
starve to death if the women, who know something 
about witchcraft, did not go to the city every market- 
day to sell cheeses and mountain plants. The men 
poach, spite of the gendarmes, and powder doesn’t 
cost them much.” 

Skipper Ruf has no suspicion that speaking ill of 
Puget-Maure only increases my desire to see it. 

“You won’t even find any road. There was one 
once, but the tempest changed it into a ravine, and 
the Puget people think themselves too high and 
mighty to turn road-makers.” 

My obstinacy, however, finally vanquished Ruf’s 
objections. His Roman blood makes him instinct- 
ively hate the Bedouin races, and as an old sailor he 
regards a few hours’ climbing among the mountains a 
venturesome expedition. 

Ruf even recollected, very opportunely, that he 
had a friend up there. 

“ He’s an ex-captain of a coaster, a capital fellow, 
but a little crack-brained, who took it' into his head 
to go and live at Puget-Maure with his daughter. 
They occupy the castle. You’ll see it. I wouldn’t 
change mine for it.” 

Let Ruf heap scorn on Puget-Maure! The im- 
portant point is that, as soon as fair weather returns, 
he is to take me in his boat to the calcinque ,of 
Aygues-Seches, into which the Riou falls after flow- 


18 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


ing past Puget. Thence, it seems, bv ascending the 
bed of the torrent I can reach the village with little 
difficulty. During the summer months, here as well 
as in Greece, torrents are the best roads. 




y 

THE CALANQUE 

Skipper Ruf lias planned a surprise. While we go 
by sea, Tardive, mounted on Arlatan, with Ganteaume 
behind her, will carry my baggage by the road — there 
really is one — to Puget. Then Tardive will return 
alone, leaving Ganteaume with me a fortnight for 
company. This is the season Ruf feels the necessity 
of going coral-fishing, and Ganteaume is of no service 
to him. 

Ruf, however, doesn’t yet pardon Puget. He takes 
advantage of our being alone on the blue water to 
commence his diatribe anew. But not daring to at- 
tack in front he makes a circuit, and tells me — why 


20 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


the deijce does he ? —that the part of the gulf where 
we are sailing covers a city which disappeared no- 
body knows when, in the time of “ the marble she- 
wolf !” When the sea is very calm, as it is to-day, 
columns and the walls of the circus can be distinctly 
seen. “ An Arles ten fathoms below ! Look !” 

I do look, and can barely distinguish, amid huge 
sea-urchins wheeling on their prickles, and fish dart- 
ing to and fro, glittering with metallic lustre, an un- 
even bottom, black with floating algae. 

Ruf, more fortunate, discovers all sorts of things. 
He talks of silver cups, bronze gods formerly dragged 
up in the fishermen’s nets, a jar so incrusted with shells 
that it looked like a fragment of rock, but filled with 
gold coins, which a child found flung on the sand the 
day after a storm. “ Oh, if all the gold lying useless 
there could only be brought to light !” And the old 
republican, in whom the soul of the Gracchi lives 
again, created a new world in his imagination, a world 
where every one should be born rich, and all worthy 
folk should be happy. 

Still suppose, some day, while casting the gangui , 
lie, too, should haul up a little bit of the treasure. 
He would 'know how to use it as well as the next one. 
“ You’ll see me a gentleman, Tardive a lady, and 
Ganteaume with shiny pumps.” 

Take care; Skipper Ruf is making fun of himself, 
and when a Provencal does that it’s never long before 
he makes fun of somebody else. 

How it is the people of Puget-Maure who catch it. 
They, too, have a treasure, and that’s what makes 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


21 


them so proud : a golden goat, which is seen at 
night feeding on the moss in the mountains. It runs 
so fast that nobody has ever been able. to capture it. 
But hope keeps people alive, though it doesn’t fatten 
them, and if the Mouresq , as they are called, are all 
thin, it’s because, poor wretches, they’ve lived a long 
while on nothing but hope. 

Having this time said all he had to say, Skipper 
Ruf began to laugh silently, with his teeth clinched 
upon the stem of his pipe. lie was still laughing 
while we landed at the foot of the cliffs of Aygues- 
Seclies, and only stopped long enough to eat our fare- 
well breakfast, prepared by Tardive, to which we 
added several dozen arapedes,* dug with our knives 
from among the rocks. 

* Shell-fish. 



VI 

IN THE VALLEY 

Skipper Ruf told me : “ The valley runs just be- 
neath the village ; by going straight up you’ll reach 
Puget in less than two hours.” 

A shepherd lad about fifteen years old, who, leav- 
ing his dog to watch his flock, was amusing himself 
by carving the odd nodosities of a carob-bough into 
little figures, confirmed these directions. 

At first the walk was delightful along the bed of 
the stream, where, instead of water, tall flowers and 
gray grasses rippled under the sea-breeze. 

Unluckily, neither Skipper Ruf nor the shepherd 
had informed me of one important fact — that, a little 
farther up, the tempest, a bad road-maker, had left 
on the way at least three-quarters of the pebbles and 
rocks its muddy flood should have swept to the strand. 
So henceforth my progress towards Puget-Maure was 
merely a series of perilous ascents of dry cascades, 
heaps of broken stones and rocks, polished to treach- 
erous smoothness, and rendered still more slippery by 
a carpet of pine-needles. 

IIow long did the two hours seem? I don’t know. 
Time passes swiftly when a man is pursuing, without 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


23 


rest or change, the absurd occupation of hanging by 
his feet to the rough places in the rocks while his 
hands clutch a clump of rock-rose, lentiscus, or branch 
of wild fig-tree, whose crushed leaves turn him giddy 
with their pungent odor. 

Yet the sun, still fierce, was already low in the ho- 
rizon when, at a bend in the w r ay, Puget-Maure ap- 
peared. It seemed close by, within reach, just behind 
the last crag. But the crag crossed, another rose, 
then vanished, affording a second glimpse of the fan- 
tastic little village, which I ever fancied myself on 
the point of reaching, and which each time disap- 
peared. 

The landscape had changed. I first perceived this 
when, exhausted, I stretched myself flat on my back 
in the grass under a rock. 

The white limestone cliffs on the shore of the gulf 
had vanished; but, as if some ancient volcano had 
poured forth its contents there, two porphyry crags 
towered aloft, glittering in countless sparkles under 
the red rays of the setting sun. An African vegeta- 
tion clothed the glowing soil where these rays cen- 
tred: tall aloes, cacti, and here and there a flayed 
martyr, the bleeding trunk of a cork-tree. The heat, 
which had grown intense, as usual towards the close of 
day, w r as making the bark crack, the resin ooze forth, 
and the shrill notes of the grasshoppers die away in 
a complaining crescendo. 

It may be supposed that I fell asleep. 

Yes ; I fell asleep, and at once had a strange dream, 
long continued, during which I seemed to live years 


24 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


and years. In quest of hidden treasures I traversed 
unknown regions, chimerical kingdoms; but the dream 
always brought me back to a secluded valley with 
ember-colored cliffs incrusted with carbuncles, where, 
tortured by burning thirst, I was pursuing the Golden 
Goat. 

I was even on the point of catching it, for, two 
paces away, in a bush, I saw, distinctly, its malign 
eyes and shining horns. 

A bleat close at hand and the faint tinkle of a little 
bell woke me. I opened my eyes, and at first be- 
lieved that a hallucination was prolonging my dream. 

But no; though the twilight, which had gathered 
during my long nap, was deepening every moment, 
I recognized the landscape I had so much admired 
in its sunlit splendor; and it was really a flesh-and- 
blood goat which, standing with its four feet drawn 
together, was watching me from the top of a steep 
rock. Its horns shone, its hoofs glittered, and there 
were fawn-colored shades in its fleece. 

I moved forward to get a nearer view, but my ad- 
vance startled it. With a leap it vanished for an 
instant, then appeared again on another rock. 

On the spot it had left, the red stone where its 
hoofs had rested seemed coated with gold. I could 
not help smiling. Had Skipper Ruf made a mistake 
in his jesting? Had I, at my first entrance into this 
region, met the Golden Goat of the legend ? 

Meanwhile, the mischievous yellow brute, as the 
genuine Golden Goat would probably have done, 
seemed waiting for me and challenging pursuit. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


25 


I moved forward again. It started off anew, this 
time with horns set forward, dashing into a dense 
thicket of lentiscus, where it became entangled. I 
had already caught it, and was smoothing its rough, 
red skin, when, by a single effort, bursting through 
the obstructing boughs, it bounded away in freedom 
on the other side. 

Something tinkled, doubtless its little bell, which 
had been unfastened, for I found under the bushes 
one of the bolts, shaped like a half-crescent, used by 
the shepherds to fasten the wooden collars the goats 
wear around their necks. I searched for the bell in 
vain. Being heavier, it must have rebounded and 
rolled into the hollow, where a small pool of water 
laughed among the stones. 

The goat was far away, running at full speed. 
Stimulated by the sport, interested by the mystery, I 
began to run, too, without paying much heed to my 
goal. 

We were now following a sort of road, and I was 
close to the animal when, by the rising moon, I saw 
it, with one last bound, vanish as if by a miracle into 
the very midst of a rock that seemed to close the 
valley. 

At the same moment I heard, about fifty feet above 
me, the sound of voices and the tinkling of bells, and, 
raising my head, perceived amid the jagged outlines 
of roofs relieved against the sky the profiles of people 
talking together as they leaned on their elbows at the 
top of a terrace. What I had mistaken for a rock 
was probably a village. 


26 THE GOLDEN GOAT 



“ Holloa!” I shouted. “Is this Puget?” 

“Yes; you need only follow the path, climb the 
steps, and pass through the gate.” 

I followed a narrow path which ended, for better 
or worse, in steps hewn from the rock, and passed 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


2 ? 


under a low archway, doorless, but -still surmounted 
by worn armorial bearings. An old woman showed 
me the way to the inn, where, despite Skipper Ruf’s 
gloomy predictions, I fell asleep — after a supper 
which hunger made delicious — in a white bed stand- 
ing in the middle of a little room whiter still, whose 
fantastic ogives, up to the moment when slumber 
closed my eyelids, created the illusion of a rustic, 
humble Alhambra. 


YII 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 

I had forgotten the goat. Ganteaume reminded 
me of it in the morning. 

Arriving late on Arlatan, he had spent the night 
— Tardive having returned at once — under the roof 
of the ex-captain of whom Ruf spoke yesterday. 

Ganteaume has brought my valise. 

While putting it on the table he discovered a bit 
of red rock, glittering with bright specks, which I had 
picked up mechanically on the spot where the goat 
had appeared. He went into raptures over it, and 
asked whether all these specks were real gold. 

The bolt, too, interested him. Usually these bolts 
are of wood, shaped by a knife, but he made me no- 
tice that this one was ivory. 

Then he left me to go and get my books. When 
alone, I began to think. 

Before hearing Skipper Ruf’s stories I had known 
his legend, and in every corner of Provence I had en- 
countered the Golden Goat. 

At Baux, wandering on moonlit nights through the 
deserted palaces and a.o'ng the edge of precipices ; near 
Arles at Cordes, around the mysterious cavern hewn 
from the rock in the shape of a sword ; near Vallauris, 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


29 


in the Yal d’ Or, on the table-land strewn with strange 
ruins called Cordes or Cordoue, whence there is so 
beautiful a view beyond the orange-groves which gir- 
dle the Golfe Juan, to the isles of Lerins, Saint Mar- 
guerite, Saint Honnorat, shining white amid the sea. 

Everywhere the legend was associated with memo- 
ries of the Saracenic occupation, and everywhere the 
salient point was a goat with golden fleece, living in a 
grotto full of countless wealth, and bringing death to 
the man bold enough to follow or to seize it. 

Thus my half delusion was explained in the sim- 
plest way in the world. 

The heat under the pine-trees was overwhelming, 
and with my brain dulled by Skipper Ruf’s garrulity 
it is not surprising that, having fallen asleep, I should 
have dreamed of treasures, and, on waking, should have 
mistaken for the Golden Goat the first one that came 
along. 

Reddish goats are not rare. I remember having 
seen a whole flock of them in Naples, at the foot of 
Virgil’s tomb. 

If my goat’s hoofs glittered like diamonds, no doubt 
it was because it had polished them by running over 
the dry grass and among the broken stones. If its 
horns shone, too, it was because the animal liked to 
rummage, head down, among the hard branches of the 
myrtle and lentiscus thickets. As to marks left by 
its hoofs, I was geologist enough to perceive, by mere- 
ly examining the piece of rock Ganteaume so greatly 
admired, that it was nothing but a fragment of red 
porphyry incrusted with grains of mica. 


30 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


The bolt, however, did puzzle me. I showed it to 
the innkeeper. 

“ That,” he said, putting on a very solemn air, “ is 
the bolt of a bell ; but though I’ve watched flocks in 
my day I never saw one like it. In the first place, if 
I’m not mistaken, it’s made of fine ivory. And then 
just notice these designs ; shepherds nowadays can’t 
do such work. It must be as old as the roads. The 
man who made the bolt doubtless died long ago, and 
the animal that wore it, too.” 

I thought it useless to undeceive the landlord by 
telling him that the goat which lost the bolt was still 
alive, and very much alive. Whether the bolt is old 
or not, a bit of ivory might at any time fall by chance 
into the hands of a shepherd, who amused himself by 
carving it. 

Yet it’s none the less true that, if the shepherd in 
question — if any shepherd — or if Ganteaume, while 
finding' this curiosity, had seen, as I did, a goat with 
reddish hair dart away in the dazzling light of the 
setting sun — if he had noticed, as I did, spots which 
shone with metallic lustre on the stones its hoofs had 
brushed, nothing would have shaken his belief that 
the Golden Goat had actually appeared to him. 

I should have liked to be that shepherd. 

Every evening, agitated by fear and hope, I would 
have returned to the valley to watch for it, to track 
it, spite of perils and precipices, through the wild 
scenes it haunts, to the treasure, to the grotto. The 
artless illusion — £t least for a few hours, a few months 
— would have brightened my life. 


VIII 


A SEAFARING BACCHUS 

Ganteaume not returning, I resolved to visit the 
village. 

A veritable pirate’s nest is this Puget, perched high 
aloft on its crag, whence one has a distant view of the 
sea through the lance-shaped leaves of the Barbary 
vegetation. 

There are no ramparts ; the houses take the place 
of these, forming a line along the edge of the preci- 
pice, and pierced at long intervals by narrow win- 
dows which, in case of need, would serve for loop- 
holes. 

I intended to make the whole circuit of the town, 
and then go down to the valley through which I pass- 
ed yesterday. I recognized the old door by which I 
had entered. 

Within were streets like stairs — long, dark, cool, 
covered passages — and then, with its fountain and 
lavatory, a little square surrounded by white arcades. 
Many of the houses were empty, and open to the four 
winds of heaven. Grass was growing in them, sweet 
marjoram perfumed the chinks of the broken ceil- 
ings : and between the windows, which had neither 

O ’ 7 


32 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


glass nor shutters, and the roofs, whose cracks afforded 
glimpses of the blue sky, a flock of swallows flitted to 
and fro. 

What if I were to venture into the labyrinth? I 
tried, attracted by its picturesque charm, but was soon 
forced to retreat. 

Men and women, sitting on the thresholds, gazed 
at me without resentment, it is true, but with evident 
astonishment. These were the half savages Skipper 
Ruf had described. Yet they returned my salute 
when I bowed to them. But the street is theirs. I 
felt myself an intruder in their home, and hurried 
back to the little square. 

Ganteaume was there. He had been looking for 
me “more than two hours,” he added, like the true 
Southern exaggerator he has already become. 

Some one was waiting for me, it appeared — Mon- 
sieur Hounorat Gazan, Skipper Ruf s friend, the ex- 
captain. 

Tardive had told him about me, and he had come 
to pay the first call. 

So, Ganteaume always in front, I went back to the 
inn and climbed its cold stone steps, polished to the 
semblance of green marble by the shoes of the peas- 
ants and the slides of the village lads ; though I first 
stopped to admire what had escaped my notice this 
morning. — the amazing sign, “The Seafaring Bac- 
chus,” representing a chubby child, garlanded with 
grapes, seated astride of a cask against which the 
waves were furiously beating. 

Monsieur Ilonnorat really was waiting for me, and 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


33 


very placidly, over a bottle of muscat wine, in the 
great hall of the Bacchus, now as dark as an Arabian 
coffee-house, the blinds having been shut to keep out 
the sun and the flies. 

I groped my way to shake hands with him, but my 
eyes gradually became accustomed to the dim light, 
and our acquaintanceship, thanks to the muscat, was 
made in a trice. 

Monsieur Honnorat, Gazan Honnorat, is the Mayor 
of Puget. In this character he has charge of the ar- 
chives — that is, he keeps the key of an old box that 
has been banished to the garret. 

“If you are not afraid of dust and rats, your visit 
will be very timely. Rummaging among the old pa- 
pers will greatly benefit them. Saladine, my house- 
keeper, is growing old, and neglects them. They 
must need dusting sorely.” 

In reality, Monsieur Honnorat is more scholarly 
than he wishes to show. As I explain my plans, he 
owns that he himself formerly undertook and then 
abandoned a work similar to the one I have in view : 
the monograph of Puget-Maure; so-called, he tells 
me, because, thanks to its natural fortifications, the 
Saracens held out there even after the great defeat 
and the destruction of Fraxinet. 

“ It is very remarkable, and you should have — ” 

“ Yes, I should have gone on with it. But how 
can it be helped? The natives of Provence — those 
who live here especially — are all alike. Up to fifty, 
quick as powder! Then indolence overtakes us, we 
grow fat, and become Turks.” 


84 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Monsieur Honnorat gave me some particulars. 

Too far away from the sea to fly, the inhabitants 
of Puget-Maure had succeeded in making themselves 
respected. Somewhat late, towards the fifteenth cen- 
tury, they were converted, after a fashion, and min- 
gled with the people in the vicinity. . But the race 
retained some characteristic customs. And Monsieur 
Honnorat mentioned certain families: Quitran, Goi- 
ran, Roustan, Autran. “ All names ending in cm” he 
added, “reveal the Arabic origin. We have it, too ; 
we are called Gazan ; and if your eyes are good you 
will distinguish above our gate-way a fragment of an 
escutcheon whose design is evidently Moorish.” 

I have not had time to test the value of worthy 
Monsieur Honnorat’s ethnographical and linguistic 
attainments. At all events, these thin, brown-skinned 
peasants, so uncivilized of aspect in their garments of 
undyed wool, might easily pass for pirates. Monsieur 
Honnorat himself, with his big nose, his unruffled, 
dignified manner, the fatalistic sentiments which, 
when he removes his pipe, roll over his thick beard — 
a little less heavy around his mouth and ears — ap- 
pears for the moment a true follower of the prophet. 

But the muscat is finished. Monsieur Honnorat 
insists on showing me his castle, upon presenting me 
to his daughter. He is a widower, it seems, and has 
a charming daughter. So off we go towards the castle 
towering at one corner of the square, a castle which 
would be just like all the other houses, were it not 
for a tolerably handsome portal, feudal in appearance, 
and a tower, once a stronghold, now a dove-cot, 


Tilti GOLDEN GOAT 3o 

whose walls on three sides have been turned by the 
sun to the color of a crust, while the fourth one, fac- 
ing the sea, is crumbling under the influence of the 
salt air. 


IX 


J 


WHITE BUTTERFLIES 


“Noeette! Xorette!” 
shouted Monsieur Honuorat 
in the deep tones of an old 
sailor, as he stood at the 
foot of the tower; “ Xo- 
rette!” But Xorette did 
not answer. 

u Oh, you can call till to- 
morrow,” interrupted an an- 
gry voice. “ Mademoiselle 
went out of the bake-house 
just as soon as the fougasse 
was done, leaving me alone 
to attend to everything. 
Xow she’s up under the 
roof, looking after her silk- 
worm eggs; and 
when Mademoi- 
selle is looking 
after her silk- 
worm eggs she 
wouldn’t heed 
the thunder of the Eternal Father himself / 5 



THE GOLDEN GOAT 


37 


The person who thus joined in the conversation 
uninvited, according to the patriarchal custom of 
Provence, was a tall, thin, dried-up woman in whom, 
— before Monsieur Honnorat said, “ Set down your 
loaves, Saladine; you can scold more comfortably!” — I 
had already recognized the loyal yet tyrannical house- 
keeper of the Gazan family. 

On her head, classically crowned with the little 
round cushion of the caryatides, she balanced a wait- 
er filled with steaming bread, and under one arm, 
wrapped in a napkin, was one of the thin cakes, made 
of dough, which housewives cook before the open fire, 
constantly pricking it with the tips of their fingers 
and moistening it with oil. 

“ Here is something we ought to have had just now 
to help down the muscat,” sighed Monsieur Honno- 
rat. “We’ll remember it another time; meanwhile, 
let us have a taste.” 

I broke off a corner, and, without stretching the 
truth, pronounced the fougasse delicious. Monsieur 
Honnorat expressed no opinion. 

u Perhaps the oil was scanted ?” Impudent words, 
which instantly opened the floodgates of Saladine’s 
wrath. 

“ The oil scanted ? The idea of saying so ! A whole 
bottle was used, a bottle of virgin oil, every drop 
worth its weight in gold. Only we found five or six 
women cooking there, and Mademoiselle Horette, as 
usual, insisted on moistening their cakes. It’s a 
waste, a ruinous waste ! Ah, when poor Madame 
Gazan was alive ! . . .” 


38 


THE GOLDEN GOA't 


Monsieur Honnorat took me by the arm. 

“I know Saladine ; she’ll keep on scolding an 
hour. Let’s escape to the roofs. You shall see the 
silk-worm egg-culture ; it is interesting.” 

A dark staircase, a dark landing, then a door flung 
open, and, in the bright square of the door-way, a 
whirl of silver and gold. 

“ Mademoiselle Gazan, Skipper Ruf’s friend.” 

I bow by instinct, and, the first surprise over, look 
about me to get a clear understanding of my sur- 
roundings. We are in the garret — a garret where the 
sun shines into every corner. The gold is the gar- 
lands of cocoons suspended from transverse bars, so 
close together that they form hangings; the silver, 
white butterflies resting on the cocoons. 

Cautiously, bending our heads to avoid knocking 
against anything, we enter the sanctuary, following 
Mademoiselle Horette and Ganteaume, who, since 
yesterday, has constituted himself her page. 

Monsieur Honnorat tells me that Mademoiselle 
Norette, finding silk very low, and eggs, on the con- 
trary, very high, thought of devoting her time ex- 
clusively to dealing in eggs. She has carried on the 
business successfully for two years. The money she 
makes is her own. Raising silk- worms has always 
been regarded in well-to-do middle-class families as 
an aristocratic business, which can be pursued with- 
out loss of caste. Puget-Maure eggs are in demand, 
for fine ones cannot be had everywhere. The care of 
them requires attention and conscientiousness. The 
cocoons must be selected with great caution ; doubtful 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


89 


or diseased butterflies must be examined with the mi- 
croscope, according to the Pasteur method. . . . 

Monsieur Honnorat explains everything in detail : 
the selected cocoons are strung in chaplets — he calls 
them filanes — and when the needle is delicately passed 
through without injuring the cocoon, the male and 
female butterflies come out. The females remain 
motionless, the males’ wings and bodies quiver. Some 
pair off themselves, others must be mated and after- 
wards unmated / the males, henceforward useless, are 
drowned, while the females, placed on a cloth-covered 
frame, lay their eggs, which look like tiny beads, at 
first hueless, then pale yellow, then violet, then lead 
color. Other growers have a more complicated ap- 
paratus, muslin bags, cases in which each color is sepa- 
rate. . . . He believes in the simple method. . . . 

But I listen absently. 

I am watching Mademoiselle Norette, a fragile bru- 
nette, scarcely more than a child, though her figure 
has the womanly development that comes early in 
Eastern lands ; Mademoiselle Norette, who, with her 
innocent smile, is at work again, mating and unmating, 
with her slender, amber -tinted fingers the female 
butterflies, whose hearts are visibly expanding, while 
the males are fluttering their demonstrations of at- 
traction. 



X 

INSTALLATION IN THE TOWER 

Yes, this Mademoiselle Norette 
is a child, a perfect child ; her 
eyes say so, those dark, mischiev- 
ous, gentle eyes, apparently so wholly un- 
troubled as they gaze innocently upon life. 

She is a woman by force of will. Left 
motherless when twelve years old, with a 
peace-loving father and the scolding Sala- 
dine, she is the one who rules. Oh, there is 
no appearance of giving orders ; only, spite of the ty- 
rannical airs he puts on, Monsieur Ilonnorat does noth- 
ing except what she approves, and, spite of her fits of 
temper and shrill screeches, Saladine herself obeys her. 

Mademoiselle Xorette must have wished me to 
lodge in the castle, for Monsieur Hon norat, by dint of 
entreaties, induced me to do so, and this morning Sala- 
dine is arranging my quarters. 






THE GOLDEN GOAT 


41 


It seems that The Seafaring Bacchus — where my 
room, adjoining the public one, was always tilled, 
through the holes in the partition, with the noise of 
gamesters and the buzzing of flies — wasn’t a suitable 
place for me. 

“ Besides,” said Monsieur Honnorat, “ what would 
people think if they knew I had let Skipper Ruf s son 
and friend stay at the tavern, as if they were peddlers 
or strolling actors.” 

So I have left The Seafaring Bacchus, though I shall 
continue to take my meals there w T ith Ganteaume. 

Monsieur Honnorat offers us a whole story of his 
tower. 

There is nothing to shock Puget in this arrange- 
ment Living under the same roof, even when that 
roof shelters a young girl, does not imply intimacy. 
Houses often have three or four owners ; each one oc- 
cupies his own corner without troubling himself about 
his neighbor, and, in case of a lawsuit, they don’t al- 
ways recognize one another easily in the entanglement 
of the stories. 

The room set apart for my use is, perhaps, a little 
high up, but delightful, and seems as though it had 
been made for me. 

The archives are above, in a sort of garret, which 
will be very convenient for my investigations, and 
that no time may be lost, I have spent a whole deli- 
cious afternoon in shaking these yellow papers and 
shrivelled parchments, whence floats the dust of ages, 
while through the floor rises the noise of Saladine and 
Norette moving the furniture — one scolding, the other 


42 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


laughing. Already I have come upon several title- 
deeds, which I shall reserve for future study, and a 
court-roll of the year 1400, where names of places, 
sacrilegiously misspelled by our own clerks in the 
land-survey office, appear in their original verity, un- 
der the garb of the Provencal peasant dialect or of 
barbarous Latin. 

Besides the garret, there is the terrace — a terrace 
built in the fashion of the country, bordered with a 
high stone parapet, which becomes lower as it follows 
the slope of the tiled roof, so that, at the extreme end, 
one might lean one’s elbows on it to get a view of the 
landscape, while on the three other sides there is al- 
ways a cool, shady corner to be found in the summer, 
a sunny one in the winter. Perched aloft like a look- 
out, I could see the white sail of Skipper Kuf’s craft 
passing in the distance. 

Below the tower ripples a brook fed by invisible 
springs filtering through the ground at the foot of the 
rocks. But, a hundred yards away, the water ceases 
to glitter in the stony bed of the valley, suddenly ex- 
hausted by the drain made upon it by the owners of 
numberless little gardens, whose stone-walls topple 
along the side of the cliff. 

Here one can become very thoroughly acquainted, 
topographically, with the history of Puget-Maure. 

In former days, before the land was cleared and 
cultivated, the waters of the springs must have flowed 
in an abundant stream to the sea; and the calanque 
of Aygues-Seches then afforded the sailors a supply of 
water. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


43 


Had the Phoenicians, and, in later times, the Greeks, 
a port there? The Saracens undoubtedly knew the 
coast and sheltered their light vessels in it. It was 
only later that they climbed the hills and settled in 
Puget, which remains just as they built it, with its 
streets like staircases, where the leaning houses would 
kiss one another if, here and there, an arch or vaulted 
passage did not interpose to maintain good order. 
Does any dim remembrance of their origin linger in 
the minds of yonder men down below who, their work 
completed, sit in front of the old house they occupy 
together, gazing steadily, in the hope of something 
indescribable which ought to come, at the sea, the 
blue road to their forgotten native land ? 

A “ Monsieur ! I say ! Monsieur !’” interrupts my 
archaeological reflections. 

Saladine, anxious and busy, is coming towards me, 
turning to see if any one is following her. 

What is the cause of these airs of mystery, and what 
can Saladine want from me ? 


XI 


E BOLT AND THE BELL 

It seems that while ar- 
ranging the small quantity 
of luggage brought from The 
Seafaring* Bacchus by Gan- 
teaume, Mademoiselle No- 
rette showed great astonish- 
ment on discovering among 
my books and papers the 
famous ivory bolt. 

She questioned Gan- 
teaume, who could tell her 
nothing, except that the 
bolt belonged to me. Now 
she desired to know how 

I told Saladine the story of my meeting the marvel- 
lous yellow goat which made me run the whole length 
of the valley three days before, on the very evening 
of my arrival. 

“ Then you met Jeanne !” 

“ Jeanne ?” 

“ Yes, Mise Jano, Mademoiselle Norette’s goat, our 
goat, which that very day — she’s so mischievous — 



it came into my hands. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


45 


pulled out with her horns the stake to which she was 
tied in the meadow, and came back with her collar 
awry, just ready to drop off, the rope trailing, and the 
bolt and bell lost. You have found the bolt, but the 
bell must be had. Mademoiselle Norette has been 
crying about it, and Monsieur Ilonnorat would be 
fairly sick if he knew it was missing. A silver bell, 
monsieur, which has been in the Gazan family hun- 
dreds and hundreds of years ! If you could remember 
the place! Perhaps it might be found. . . .” 

Then Mademoiselle Norette, who was awaiting the 
result of the embassy on the stairs, timidly advanced. 

“Above all, monsieur, pray don’t let my father 
know anything about it.” 

Night was falling. I promised to go to the valley 
at daybreak to try to recognize the thicket through 
which the goat was passing when, in the dusk, I fan- 
cied I heard something tinkle. 

And I did go to the valley this morning. Strange 
prelude to my scientific labors, this search for a stray 
• bell. 

Luckily the red porphyry rock on which the goat 
stood for a moment will serve for a landmark. 

Here is the thicket, the place where the bolt 
dropped, and, at the foot of a rocky slope, polished 
by the tramping of the peasants and their flocks, 
lies the pool of water into which the bell must have 
rolled. 

Something white was shimmering at the bottom ; it 
was the bell. 

I drew it out, dripping, and instantly understood 
4 


46 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


why Monsieur Honnorat and Mademoiselle Norette 
attached so much importance to its possession. 

Bordering the extreme edge, curiously wrought in 
the Saracenic taste, ran a sort of arabesque which I at 
first supposed to be merely an ornamental device, but 
which, on a closer examination, appeared to form a 
strange inscription in very ancient Greek, blended 
with Kufic characters. 

The whole incident seemed to enter the framework 
of my researches with remarkable aptness. 

I was thinking of copying the inscription and keep- 
ing it to decipher at my leisure — for I have some 
knowledge of cryptography — when Mademoiselle 
Norette came running up. Iler yellow goat, just like 
any other, and no whit extraordinary in broad day- 
light, followed her. 

Mademoiselle Norette took the bell, and, laughing 
and thanking me, hung it round Mise Jano’s neck. 
The animal instantly set off at a run in front of its 
mistress towards the village. 

Monsieur Honnorat was grumbling when we re- 
turned. 

“ Is it sensible to trust that silver bell to the goat, 
Norette ? You may lose it some day.” 

“ You see that it isn’t lost, papa.” 

“True! But people have seen it, and that always 
makes them talk.” 

“ I like to make people talk,” said Norette, in her 
gentle but resolute voice. 


XII 


THE BASKET OF WISHES 

This adventure has created a species of mutual un- 
derstanding between Mademoiselle Norette and my- 
self. v 

Mademoiselle Xorette, accompanied by Ganteaume, 
who never goes more than a step away from her, 
showed me from top to bottom, first my tower, whose 
origin is evidently pure Saracenic, and then the castle 
proper, a more curious though less ancient structure. 

A little .Renaissance dwelling, but built according 
to the plan of Arab houses, so that one feels surprised, 
as though by an anachronism, at discovering on the 
ceiling of the staircase, barely distinguishable under 
the layers of whitewash, several bas-reliefs inspired 
by the Iliad: an Agamemnon, wearing the cap of 
King Francis ; a lady who, but for the name Briseis, 
written on a streamer, I should take for Diane de 
Poitiers. 

On the other hand, the court-yard has retained the 
purest Oriental character, visible in its low -curbed 
well, its niches hollowed in the wall to serve for 
shelves, the double row of galleries by which the 
rooins are lighted, without windows on the street, and 


48 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


the huge vine, centuries old, which, growing in a cor- 
ner of the paved yard, covers it almost entirely with 
its crooked black arms and grape - laden branches, 
amid which at noon flocks of pigeons coo. 

The interior of the dwelling is a perfect museum. 

Without counting several morose-featured ancestral 
portraits, there are hangings whose rich colors mark 
them products of Smyrna and Aleppo, damascened 
weapons, lamps of peculiar form, stools, tables, mirrors* 
inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and furniture a hundred 
years old, the whole forming the strangest medley 
imaginable. 

Moreover, there is nothing to suggest the cult of 
the curio, unknown, thank Heaven ! on these heights, 
but rather a patriarchal atmosphere, the impress left 
by several generations. 

Mademoiselle Norette explains that the members of 
the Gazan family have always been great travellers. 

Then she opens a small iron-bound oak coffer and 
shows me pearl and coral necklaces, whose clasps are 
usually either a Greek coin or some ancient carved 
stone, chaplets of sequins, heavy silver bracelets, gor- 
gets of refined yet barbaric style, all sorts of orna- 
ments brought from far distant lands to grandmoth- 
ers and great-grandmothers whose names she repeats. 

I ask permission to see the bell. Mademoiselle 
Horette is troubled. It appears that she no longer 
has it, but has returned it to her father, who prizes it 
highly as a memento. 

“ Above all, don’t let him know what happened ; 
iievej* tell him that you have had it in your hands.” 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


49 


And to change a conversation which is embarrass- 
ing to her, she takes from the very bottom of the 
chest a small basket made of woven willow. What new 
riches does it contain under the old satin square so 
carefully enwrapping it ? 

An egg, a pinch of salt, a bit of brown bread, and 
a little stick with a tuft of wool at the end. 

“ These are the wishes !” Norette says. 

“ The wishes ?” 

“Yes. The wishes and gifts brought to me in my 
cradle when I was a day old.” 

“Just as they were in the time of the fairies?” 

“ Exactly. Only, the fairies having died long ago, 



50 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


four old women, neighbors or friends, usually take 
their places, mindful of customs, which, whenever a 
girl is born, allot to them this important mission. 
The idea occurs to them suddenly at the bake-house, 
the washing - place, while gossiping about rain and 
fair weather. As soon as the matter is decided, they 
don their Sunday dresses, put on. freshly ironed caps, 
and make their appearance. The stick, which repre- 
sents a distaff, is to make the little girl, when she 
grows up, active and industrious ; the salt is to keep 
her pure ; the bread, to render her as good as good 
bread ” 

“ And the egg ?” asked Ganteaume. “ What’s the use 
of the egg?” 

“ The egg,” Norette answered, with the utmost se- 
riousness, “is to insure her a happy marriage and 
plenty of children,” 


XIII 

GREAT-UNCLE IMBERt’s TURBAN 

But dinner must be ready, and Monsieur Honnorat 
is calling us. 

I am presented to the cure, Abbe Sebe, a little 
man as black as a mole, who has been invited in my 
honor. 

He says very little, perhaps from timidity, perhaps, 
too, because all the attention of which the holy man 
is capable is monopolized by a hare -ragout, which 
really does give one a high opinion of Saladine’s cu- 
linary talents. 

Monsieur Honnorat, on the contrary, is very talka. 
tive. With his napkin tucked under his chin, he tells 



52 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


us the history of his ancestors, the Gazans, who were 
all sailors or physicians. And I imagine them, I can 
fairly see them : some scholars like Averroes and Avi- 
cenna, others expending at sea, or in caravans, the rage 
for adventure latent in their blood. 

Monsieur Honnorat himself partook of both ten- 
dencies. The first intention was that he should 
study medicine, but travel temjDted him. 

He relates his voyages to the Levant, mentions les 
Nchelles, Corfu, Negropont, Famagosta, all sorts of 
names, which, uttered by him, instantly conjure up 
visions of cities with domes and minarets, whose 
wharves are cumbered with bales, and thronged with 
negroes eating watermelons amid odors of melting 
tar and spices. 

Mademoiselle Horette sometimes interrupts him 
with the question : “ Is that really true, papa ?” which 
suddenly throws the worthy man into comical fits of 
half-feigned anger. 

This is not surprising. The Orientals were always 
famous story-tellers, and perhaps it may be a reflec- 
tion of the Arabian Nights that so picturesquely 
colors southern imaginations. 

The person under discussion now is great Great- 
uncle Imbert, Imbert-Pacha as he is called, who, hav- 
ing gone as cabin-boy at the age of twelve, had sailed 
over almost every sea in days w T hen mariners had 
nothing but sailing-vessels, and there was really some 
credit in navigating. 

After a number of fortunes had been made and 
speedily lost, Great-uncle Imbert, the future Imbert- 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


53 


Pacha, found himself one day a mere common sailor 
ill a wealthy Arabian seaport. 

The vessel, safely moored, was taking in her cargo, 
while the crew were scattered in the coffee-houses 
of the town. Great-uncle Imbert, whose purse was 
empty,- tried to kill the time by strolling along the 
wharf. 

It was a splendid quay — long, broad, and paved with 
white marble, whose reflection fairly scorched the 
eyes. 

Some one passed by, undoubtedly a grandee in that 
country, for he was robed in silk, covered with jewels, 
and trailed a pearl -embroidered mantle, while two 
beautiful female slaves walked one on each side, 
shielding him with a parasol and fanning him. 

Great-uncle Imbert mechanically began to follow, 
walking in his shadow, the only shade on the wharf, 
and saying to himself : “ My poor Imbert, how bored 
you are ! But, bless my heart ! here’s somebody who 
doesn’t seem to be.” 

Suddenly the man with the two slaves drew a hand- 
kerchief from his pocket, and, passing it over his face, 
exclaimed : 

“ Couquin de Diou, qunto calur /”* 

Amazed at hearing a Turk complain of the heat in 
the Marseilles dialect, Great-uncle Imbert taps him on 
the shoulder : 

“ Quant voles juga que sies ProuvencauP f 


* Oh, Lord ! how hot it is ! 
f If I shouldn’t think you were from Provence. 


r>4 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Was lie a native of Provence? Just think; a 
cousin, a Gazan belonging to the older branch of 
the family, who had disappeared, and was now like a 
prince or king in that region. 

“ It was at that very time,” Monsieur Honnorat con- 
cludes, “ that Great-uncle Imbert took the turban for 
several years.” 

“Took the turban?” interrupted the abbe. 

“ Yes, he took the turban, became a Turk. Man 
needs religion, and all religions are good. Besides, we 
still have his turban. Ganteaume, fetch the stool and 
get down Grand-uncle Imbert’s turban from the closet 
yonder.” 

Ganteaume took down the turban, a huge yellow 
one, and tried it on. 

“All religions are good,” Monsieur Honnorat per- 
sists; “ especially the Mussulman one. Allah ! Allah!” 

It was a comical and charming picture : Monsieur 
Honnorat positive ; the abbe not daring to show his 
irritation; Saladine, scandalized, raising her long, thin 
arms towards heaven; and Horette laughing till she 
cried. 





XIY 

THE DONKEY’S PASSAGE 

In this queer house — which, thanks to Norette, is al- 
most comfortable, its rooms not wholly destitute of 
carpets, and its brick steps and landings polished— 
there is one thing that does surprise me : the corridor. 

To harmonize with the elegance of the vaulted ceil- 
ing it should have, however worn, some heraldic flag- 
ging of beautiful blue- and -white faience like that 
manufactured at Moustiers or Yarages. 

But no, the corridor is paved ; it is a continuation 


56 


THU GOLDEN GOAT 


of the street, which savagely carries to the very foot 
of the staircase the terrible pointed pebbles with 
which the village bristles. 

Yet these pebbles are pleasant enough to see now 
that they have become polished and smooth as marble 
by the persistent labor of Saladine, whose constant 
sweeping has earned her the nickname of Scratch- 
pebble. 

“ Dau , Grato-caillau ?” * x * the boys call after her,’ 
when she tries to keep them from stealing her figs. 

I regret that I am not a geologist, for I should have 
there, varied and multicolored, as if in a glass-case, 
specimens of all the Alpine rocks our torrents roll 
down to the sea. 

Nevertheless, the pebbles remain sharp. “ Enough 
to kill the feet !” says Saladine, and Norette ill con- 
ceals her annoyance at being unable to go to her door 
in slippers. 

I have questioned Mademoiselle Norette about it. 

“ It is the Donkey’s Passage,” she replied, and said 
no more, but her dark eyes, usually somewhat sleepy 
in their expression, kindled with sudden wrath. 

Monsieur Honnorat, who is calmer, explained the 
matter. 

With the mania for partition peculiar to Provence, 
estates are divided, at each death, among all the co- 
heirs. Whoever desires to own his home must buy it 
back, room by room ; and I know of tiny houses which 
involved more exertion and diplomacy, ere they passed 


* How are you, Scratch-pebble ? 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


57 


into the possession of a single owner, than France used 
to secure her unity. 

Now, the castle does not belong entirely to the 
Gazans, its undisputed ownership being Mademoiselle 
Norette’s dream. 

For this she toils, and she has already succeeded, 
taking advantage of a death, in obtaining the rooms 
in the fifth story, in exchange for a bit of meadow 
land ; while, by dint of a few sacrifices, she has evicted 
a shoemaker, who pounded his leather in the little 
drawing-room on the ground-floor. 

But there is still the stable, worth, at a high valua- 
tion, fifty francs, for which she would gladly pay a 
thousand, because this dark abode at the very end of 
the house carries with it a right of way. 

The documents are formal : 

“ Item, the owner of the stable shall have a per- 
petual right to the passage, which must be paved so 
that a loaded donkey will not slip on it.” 

So, for the convenience of a donkey, Mademoi- 
selle Norette, secretly raging, daily hurts her little 
feet. 

If the donkey even existed ! 

No ; it is an imaginary donkey, a creation of the 
brain, a mere fiction. 

There really was one once, called by its master, 
that scamp of a Galfar — a near relative with whom 
the Gazans had quarrelled — Saladin, to the great 
rage of Saladine. But one fine day Galfar, a fre- 
quenter of ale-houses, lost it while playing vendome. 
This, however, does not prevent his keeping the stable, 


58 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


where lie sees fit to live on the days when, with his 
guns and dogs — Galfar is also a bit of a poacher 
— he climbs to the village, and exacting — insolent, 
shrewd rascal — the maintenance of the donkey’s road 
precisely as if the donkey was still there. 



XY 

THE EMIR’S FESTIVAL 

Yesterday at sunset a bareheaded lad, with a 
very solemn face, passed through the streets of the 
village. 

Every twenty steps he stopped, and blowing into a 
huge shell, whose point had been broken off express- 
ly to form a mouth-piece, he sent forth a prolonged, 
dismal note. 

Then he uttered the cri , the prologue to the festi- 
val, and the people listened with faces as solemn as 
his own. 

I recognized Ganteaume, who, at the cost of heav- 
en knows what manoeuvres, had secured permission 
to perform the duties of herald for a single evening. 

This morning men, women, and children are troop- 
ing from the neighboring villages along the white 
paths which stripe the mountain-sides to the valley, 
thence to climb again towards Puget. 

Puget is preparing to receive them worthily. 
Lambs are crying, sheep are bleating, and in every 
court-yard, at every door, amateur butchers, with bared 
arms, holding their knives between their teeth, are 
killing, skinning, and cutting the animals into pieces. 


00 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Hospitality is blended with vainglory. There is 
rivalry as to which dwelling shall entertain the largest 
number of friends and distant relations. And, while 
house-keepers and servants are setting the tables, turn- 
ing the spits, and heaping embers around the sauce- 
pans, the fresh blood-stained skins nailed on the front 
of each house proclaim, to the admiration of all who 
pass, the number of the animals which are to be eat- 
en within. 

Shots are fired, and hymns are heard. 

“ Let us run,” says Ganteaume ; “ there’s the bra- 
vado.” 

The penitents are bringing the saint, for whom 
they have gone in state to the mountain. The statue, 
which dates from time immemorial, is adorned with 
bunches of fresh grapes. Beneath its litter hangs a 
stole ; the children run to and fro under it, sure that 
this will make them strong and brave, while the 
young men, marching at the head of the procession, 
are discharging their guns in honor of the saint. 

Afterwards he will be carried back to the lonely 
chapel he occupies the whole year, standing on the 
altar and staring with his wooden eyes through the 
narrow grated window,. between whose bars an occa- 
sional pilgrim sometimes flings a penny, at the cliff 
dominated by the chapel, a crag which in spring is 
violet with lavender, and, after the month of August, 
gray beneath its mantle of scorched grass. 

Night promises us other amusements. 

After supper, served, as usual, at eight o’clock, I 
went with Monsieur Gazan and Norette to see the 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


61 



dancing. I expected a ball, but no indeed! Women 
do not dance here ; it is a virile exercise reserved ex- 
clusively for men. 

Ranged in two rows a dozen sturdy fellows, arrayed 
in quaint costumes and carrying swords, executed by 
5 


62 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


torchlight, to the sound of the tambourine, a war-dance 
with numerous and complicated figures, which Abbe 
Sebe, who has just joined us, asserts to be the Pyr- 
rhic. Then, moving with rhythmic step around a 
May-pole hung with long ribbons of various colors, 
they combined, by means of crossing and uncrossing 
them, the most charming interweaving. The whole 
scene formed an amusing mixture of rococo and half- 
savage customs, like the vague memory of courtly 
entertainments formerly given in this secluded rustic 
corner of the world by some aristocratic hostess who 
was enamoured of Watteau. 

Abbe Sebe, a great pagan, spite of his priestly robe, 
explains to me, supporting his opinion by quotations, 
that this is a legendary game, introduced into Prov- 
ence by the Phocian sailors, and representing the 
winding of the labyrinth of Crete. 

Abbe Sebe explains everything, except the Turk. 
For these dances are performed in the presence of a 
Turk, a handsome emir with a false beard, who, as if 
the festival w T as given in liis honor, remains motion- 
less, with thoroughly Oriental serenity, leaving the 
others to bestir themselves. 

And what a turban ! For an instant I suspect Gan- 
teaume of having appropriated Imbert-Pacha’s head- 
covering for the occasion. But the emir is tall; he 
would easily make two of Ganteaume, and, besides, 
the lad, very proud of carrying a torch, is marching 
yonder in the front rank of the procession. 

The emir seems to be watching me, fixing on me 
from time to time his sparkling eyes, to which a pair 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


of eyebrows, heavily marked with cork, lend' a very 
fierce expression. 

What has the emir to do with me? 

Does he know my weakness for Moorish things? 
Has he guessed that I came here for the express pur- 
pose of seeking traces of the chivalric conquerors 
whom he unconsciously represents ? Whatever Abbe 
Sebe, with his mania for seeing everywhere only 
Greeks and Romans, may think of it, I trace with 
good reason a Saracenic tradition in the part played 
by this bearded emir. 

He is approaching us. What if I should speak to 
him. 

But Mademoiselle Norette seems afraid. She says 
it is growing cold, that we must go in. Let us go, in 
obedience to her decree. 


XVI 



■K.tf. 


COUSIN GALFAR 


The emir was not watch- 
ing me from any sense of 
sympathy. 

We have just met at the 
Gazans’ door. He was mak- 
ing himself perfectly at home 
there, leaning against the 
wall and smoking, with his 
gun on his shoulder and his 
dog at his feet. 

A burly fellow, iudeed ! 
A sort of Corsican brigand, 
clad in velvet, with un- 
kempt hair, an indescribable 
air of youthful assurance, a 
bronzed countenance, and a 
pair of big blue eyes, whose 
glance is both bold and 
gentle. 

Where the deuce 
have I seen this 
handsome savage? 
Surely I have met 
him somewhere. 



THE GOLDEN GOAT 


65 


Taking the risk, I bow to him. He returns the 
salute courteously, though not without a touch of 
irony. But, just as I am about to speak to him, lie 
whistles to his dog and moves away. 

“ Well, so you know him !” cries Saladine. “ That’s 
Galfar, the man who has the Donkey’s Passage. 
We’ve been glad to have no news of him for two 
months. Here he is back again, no doubt with some 
mischief in his head. It’s a queer notion, all the 
same, that the people should choose such a Christian 
for the Turk.” 

“ You know,” Monsieur Honnorat interrupts, “ that 
custom requires the Turk to be a. member of our 
family. So it’s natural that, on my refusal. . . 

Monsieur Honnorat says “ on my refusal ” in a con- 
strained, almost angry tone. Perhaps he was not 
asked to personate the Turk this year, perhaps Norette 
would not consent? Yet I imagine Monsieur Hon- 
norat, grave Monsieur Honnorat, playing the Turk : a 
vision that fills me with delight. 

“ To choose that Galfar, how is it possible ?” 

Yet “that Galfar” at first sight does not seem to 
me exactly a bad fellow. But, if resentful Saladine 
is to be believed, I should do very wrong to trust to 
appearances. 

He is a spendthrift, an idler, a worthy son of the old 
Galfars, who were formerly rich, but prodigal, keeping 
open house, and, on pretext of relationship — everybody 
is a cousin when one is seeking kinsmen — housing and 
feeding every chance-comer for months. 

One Christmas, during the great-grandfather’s time, 


66 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


forty-two persons were entertained at supper, and the 
skins of fifteen sheep framed the door-way, and there 
are people who remember having seen on their door- 
steps, from New- year’s Day to St. Silvester’s Eve, a 
table covered with a white cloth, on which a glass and 
a jug of wine, refilled as soon as it was emptied, stood 
ready, gratis, to quench the thirst of any one who 
chanced to pass. 

With such management a fortune is quickly melted, 
especially when there are lawsuits. 

One after another, little by little, all the estates 
have been sold, and now the Galfars are so poor that, 
without fear of thieves, they might bar their door with 
a bush. 

Nothing is left save one small farm the bailiffs did 
not want, on which the family live. The father tries 
to cultivate the ground, but he took the mattock in 
hand too late ; one doesn’t learn to be a peasant at 
college. One fine morning, after having wandered 
abroad, served as a sailor, tried all sorts of trades, the 
son returned ; now he makes powder on the sly and 
poaches. The mother, tortured by pride and dismal 
thoughts, doesn’t find the day long enough for the 
tears she sheds. 

“And is it since the ruin that the two families have 
quarrelled?” 

“ No, indeed ! On the contrary, Monsieur Honnorat 
tried to make advances to them and help them. The 
Galfars would not respond. The Galfars and the 
Gazans are born quarrelling ; they drink in enmity 
with their mothers’ milk.” 


THE GOLDEN ,GOAT 


67 


Saladine did not exaggerate. 

I vainly questioned Monsieur Honnorat and Norette 
on this point ; doubtless it would have been equally 
useless to speak to Cousin Galfar. Waste of trouble! 
They are enemies, that’s all they know about it, but 
neither party could tell me why. 








XVII 

AT MONTE CARLO 

Ganteaume, beaming with de- 
light and full of enthusiasm, came 
to wake me. 

Yesterday, at The Seafaring 
Bacchus, where, in my absence, 
he dined alone, as sometimes hap- 
pens while I am wandering among 
the mountains, Ganteaume over- 
heard the Turk talking.* Now,, 
this Turk, it appears, knows me, 
and told some very queer things 
of me. 

I must here insert a parenthesis 
and make a painful confession. 

Not very far from Puget-Maure 
— eight or ten hours’ journey, but 
a bird at a single flight would 
cross the few woods of cork-trees 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


69 


or pines, the few sun-scorclied hills and white prom- 
ontories that intervene — is a singular country, called 
by its inhabitants Mounegue , but better known to 
Frenchmen by its Italian name, Monaco. 

Monsieur Honnorat even declares — let us leave the 
responsibility of the assertion to him — that, on certain 
clear days, with a good spy-glass, one can see from the 
top of my tower the old Monaco of the Middle Ages 
on its sea-washed rock ; lower down Monte Carlo, with 
its gardens and palaces ; and between them the little 
port dMlercule , where the tartans rock. 

I can see it all better in my memory. 

Moreover, I can see myself, not two months ago, 
under the tall rose-bushes that blossom in whiter, 
breathing the salt air, listening to the rustling of the 
palm-trees, admiring the shimmering splendor of the 
gulf. 

No one there yet ! A solitude at once delightful 
and paradoxical amid these fairy-like scenes, where the 
beauties of nature and art are happily blended. 

Six o’clock strikes, an engine whistles ; the train 
from* Nice comes in with its daily load of male and 
female gamblers. 

The crowd surges up the steps, where the gas is al- 
ready lighted as twilight closes in. 

Men with restless eyes but quiet bearing ; women 
more visibly excited, less capable of concealing their 
impatience to plunge into the bath of gold. Arid now 
let us leave the stars to shine in vain above, where no 
eyes will be lifted to them. The faint perfumes used 
by women have replaced the scent of the roses ; the 


' ‘70 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


palm-trees and the waves cease their murmured con- 
verse, seeming to keep silence for the express purpose 
of letting only the chink of coins be heard. 

Before seeking seclusion in Skipper Ruf’s house, 
and when just on the point of carrying my wise proj- 
ects into execution, I desired, I confess, to enjoy for 
the last time the contrasts of feeling to be experienced 
in Monte Carlo. 

After spending my days out of doors, dreaming of 
Virgil in some pine wood, or falling asleep in company 
with Theocritus in the hollow of a rock on the shore, 
it afforded me keen pleasure in the evening to bat- 
tle — sometimes victor, sometimes vanquished — with 
Gold, the contemptible yet omnipotent Caesar that 
rules the world. 

In short, for one whole week, having devoted a cer- 
tain sum to this purpose, I pursued the profession of 
gambling, and apparently played my part well, for the 
night I lost my last crown the cosmopolitan beauties of 
the place — Americans, Russians, and the rest— seemed 
to sympathize with my suffering, and the big devil of 
a lackey in the red waistcoat, that Providence of the 
victims whose throats are parched by agony, offered 
me the traditional glass of water on a silver tray with 
manifest consideration. 

There is something still better ! 

One of the estimable gentlemen, professors, minus 
a diploma, of roulette and trente-et-quarante, whose 
business consists in revealing the arcana of the art to 
novices, and — Midases that they are in frayed surtouts 
— in teaching them the infallible method of breaking 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


71 


the bank every evening— one of these, I say, Monsieur 
Pascal, aye ! Monsieur Blaise Pascal, came to see me. 

This Monsieur Blaise really possessed a title with 
an Italian termination, and his cards bore something 
resembling a count’s coronet, but in Monaco he was 
more frequently called Blaise Pascal, because he never 
accepted anything for his advice, contenting himself 
with making you subscribe — it usually cost a louis or 
two — for an edition, with notes and commentaries, 
winch for the last twenty years had been ready to ap- 
pear the folio wl ng year, of the Treatise on Roulette , 
composed, as everybody knows, by the famous author 
of the Provinciates. 

“ Historia Troehoidis sive cvclo'fdis, gallice la Roulette.' 1 ' 

Some practical joker had put this idea into the head 
of the worthy professor of gambling, who, on the 
strength of the book printed by Guillaume Despres, 
Rue Saint Jacques, a l’image Saint Prosper, regarded 
Blaise Pascal as a comrade, never doubting that he 
was a famous sharper in the reign of Louis XIY. 

Place of meeting : the square of the gaming palace 
in front of the large restaurant which faces the hotel, 
and, beyond its roofs, la Turbie, for it is a long time 
since Monsieur Pascal was permitted to enter its halls. 

“ It seems,” he said, after being offered a glass of 
absinthe, a tribute I willingly paid in exchange for 
his frequently amusing chatter — “it seems you. are 
about to return to Paris. The ball favors you no 
more than the cards do, and you are right to give 
them up.” 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


n 


I bowed, thus acknowledging the accuracy of this 
tardy advice. 

“ But I have something better to propose.” 

“Don’t hesitate; propose it,Nmy dear Monsieur 
Blaise.” 

“An immense tiling, stoupendo /” — Monsieur Blaise 
murdered Italian in moments of great excitement — 

“ an amazing scheme, mdravigliosa , millions, billions, 
enough to buy Monte Carlo, Monaco, and all France, r 
for a mere paltry investment of capital — ten or fifteen 
thousand francs at most.” 

Then he began to tell me some vague story about 
a hidden treasure, whose secret had been discovered 
by a sailor. The only tiling requisite — and for that 
money was needed — was to get possession of some old 
papers, manuscripts, and, above all, a mysterious arti- 
cle, -with which its owner was unwilling to part. The 
sailor would attend to that ; ma, money must first be 
had, oun petit arzent. 

Anywhere else the proposal would have made me 
smile. There was nothing extraordinary about it in 
Monaco, where I have seen very chimerical projects 
concocted by people who were perfectly sensible in 
other places. 

Besides, why diminish worthy Monsieur Pascal’s 
hopes ? I neither assented nor refused, but asked per- 
mission to think it over, promising an answer im- 
mediately on my return, and even carrying compli- 
ance tp the point of allowing myself to be made 
acquainted with the sailor in question, who was wait- 
ing for us, abominably drunk, in a pothouse. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


73 


T no longer feel surprised at having discovered 
something familiar about handsome Galfar. 

He was the drunken sailor, the man who talked 
about the treasure, I am sure of it. 

Did Monsieur Blaise Pascal during his long story, 
to which I lent rather an absent ear, mention in con- 
nection with the treasure the name of Puget-Maure, 
and did Galfar, amid the affectionate demonstrations 
* I found it somewhat difficult to escape, allude to the 
Golden Goat ? I could not remember, and had cer- 
tainly paid no special heed to it. 

Yet Galfar imagines, not without a show of reason, 
that I have come to Puget treacherously, acting on 
the information given by Monsieur Blaise Pascal and 
himself, that I mean to secure the Golden Goat treas- 
ures for my sole use, and that my rambles through 
the country, my examination of old papers, even my 
intimacy with Monsieur Gazan and Horette; have no 
other object than the discovery of the secret. 

Such is the summary of the excited report Gan- 
teaume made concerning the conversation lie over- 
heard yesterday in The Seafaring Bacchus. 





XVIII 

HUNTING WITH THE CURE 

There is positive reason for believing that the 
goat actually exists. 

From the day when, smoking his pipe and jesting, 
Skipper Ruf spoke of it to me at the calanque of 
Aygues-Seclies — from my encounter in the valley at 
dusk with Mise Jano (everybody calls Norette’s ca- 
pering pet mademoiselle), and my finding the collar- 
bolt she had lost — this is the third time the uncanny 
Golden Goat has crossed my path. 

Heaven knows that I came to Puget-Maure with 
no criminal intention, and that, at the time of my 
arrival, I was certainly thinking of anything except 
the Golden Goat. But since I am suspected, since I 
am accused, since Galfar and Providence itself seem 
leagued to urge me on, I am going deliberately in 
pursuit of the pretty,. red-haired monster ; and I swear 




THE GOLDEN GOAT 


75 


by its horns to discover, before the end of the week, 
what grain of truth is concealed in the picturesque 
legend through wdrich it is galloping. 

But whom shall I question ? . . . 

The villagers? Alas! they are taciturn, and the 
least imprudent query would at once make them share 
the suspicions with which Galfar honors me. 

Monsieur Honnorat ? From what Ganteaume has 
repeated of Galfar’s talk, the Gazans must be more or 
less directly connected with these tales of goats and 
hidden treasures. Besides, how am I to speak to 
Monsieur Honnorat about the Golden Goat without 
mentioning also the mysterious bell ? How Ho- 
rette — for wh&t reason? — requires me to keep si- 
lence on that point. On the other hand, it does 
not seem very desirable to move in the matter 
alone. 

Chance has helped me by bringing Abbe Sebe to 
my room just at the moment when, in despair, I was 
preparing to go to him. 

We are now inseparable friends. 

At first, to tell the truth, I felt little attracted 
towards this hale, loud-talking, hard-drinking fellow, 
who still retained his peasant manners ; a priest who, 
with his patched cassock and face shaven but once a 
week, looks more like a Mussulman marabout than a 
minister of the Gospel. But he persisted in making 
my acquaintance, and no matter in what direction I 
might turn my steps, I was sure to see in the stony 
paths, shining white in the sun, the black silhouette 
of Abbe Sebe, doubled by his shadow, 



















THE GOLDEN GOAT 


77 


l 


I fled from him, avoiding his wave of the hat, fear- 
ing he might wish to convert me. 

A mistake ! Abbe Sebe leaves to worthier men 
the glory and anxiety of conversions. He baptizes, 
marries, buries, trusting the rest to the Eternal Fa- 
ther, and very well satisfied if he succeeds in guiding 
to the end of the year, without too many mishaps, the 
troublesome flock of which Providence has made him 
shepherd. 

The morning when, conquered by such persistence, 
I stopped and talked with him, his dark skin reddened 
through the stubble of his beard with a child’s flush 
of pleasure, and this man of God, unable to hide his 
real delight, fairly crushed my finger-joints in a grip 
whose warmth instantly revealed to me that, before 
holding the communion-cup and pyx, he, a mountain- 
eer, had guided the plough on his father’s little farm 
for several years, wdiile getting a smattering of Latin 
in the barn during the winter. 

Learned in his own way, an excellent judge of 
broken pots, a great collector of the antique coins the 
peasants .sometimes pick up on the ground after a 
rain, never returning home without having his pock- 
ets stuffed with pebbles, Abbe Sebe — since Monsieur 
Honnorat, once so agreeable, now lapses more and 
more into Turkish indolence — is not sorry to find 
some one to whom he can confide the overflow of his 
’ observations and thoughts. 

I interest myself in the Romans, whom he loves • 
he, without very clearly understanding them, tries to 
interest himself in my Saracenic researches. But it 
6 


78 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


is my gun, 1 feel certain, that will finally make him a 
distinguished Orientalist. 

Yes, my gun ! When I am rambling through the 
fields I always take a gun by way of pretext. The 
abbe, an eager lover of sport and an excellent shot, 
fairly ached to see me carry this ridiculously useless 
weapon without ever discharging it. 

One day, far away from the village and sure of not 
being seen, he took it from me to try. 

He did try, and killed a hare. 

The next day he tried again and decimated a covey 
of partridges. 

Twice I brought my game-bag home full, amazing 
Monsieur Honnorat and winning the respect of the 
village. 

Since then it has been an understood thing, when 
we go out, that after completing my erudite collec- 
tions, I lie down in the shadow of a rock and give 
my gun and cartridges to the worthy abbe, who, with 
his cassock tucked up, displaying his. hobnailed shoes, 
and trousers reddened with mud, sets off to shoot 
hares and partridges. 

We both find an advantage in it. 

The abbe, imbued with sudden ardor for science, 
shows me curious ruins of buildings, and gives names 
of families or districts that seem to be connected with 
my studies; but, by a singular coincidence, wherever 
the abbe knows of anything he deems worth show- 
ing me, we always find, in addition, a hare waiting in 
its form, or partridges ready for the sportsman’s lead. 


XIX 


THE HERMITAGE 

There must be at least two hares near the hermit- 
age ; surely Abbe Sebe would never take me so far 
for only one. 

For it is perched very high up, and the road climbs 
perpetually among rocks marvellously barren. 

But the abbe has promised me some ruins. 

The ruins are there, and' — so are the hares. 

The abbe kills one at first, reserving, I imagine, 
the massacre of the second to while away our return ; 
then we visit the ruins. 

They consist of a small Romanesque chapel cov- 
ered with a tiled roof, on which grass and briers are 
growing thickly ; then a heap of plaster at one end 
of a walled square, formerly the abode and burial- 
place of the hermits; and in front a fountain with 
carved armorial bearings, still visible under the moss, 
dating from the commencement of the Renaissance. 

All this, no doubt, has its charms, but, possesses no 
very special interest for me. 

However, at an angle of the wall of the chapel, 
facing the east, the abbe pointed out a sundial on 
the rough plaster coating, greatly disintegrated by 


80 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


the rain and the sea-wind. Above it is a cartouch 
bearing some black letters, tiie remains of an inscrip- 
tion. The abbe, though he remembers having seen 
it nearly complete, cannot tell me the meaning. It 
was apparently a distich about shadow and treasures, 
as obscure in its barbaric Latin as a prophecy of Nos- 
tradamus. 

“This sundial and inscription,’’ the abbe contin- 
ues, pleased with the attention I am giving him, 
“ were made about the middle of the eighteenth 
century by a member of the Gazan family, a physi- 
cian and disciple of the famous Mesmer, who is re- 
membered as a somewhat crack - brained, eccentric 
personage, half philosopher, half sorcerer. The in- 
scription always possessed the gift of exciting peo- 
ple’s curiosity. 

“ They imagined, nay, they still cherish the fancy 
that it points out the place where, in ancient times, 
vast treasures were buried, and — a coincidence that 
has had no little share in strengthening this opinion 
— the fountain you see yonder is called 4 The Fount- 
ain of the Golden Goat.’ ” 

I started. 

“ What, Monsieur Abbe, you knew of this Fount- 
ain of the Golden Goat and never told me a word 
about it ! Yet its name did not come hap-hazard ; it 
must be^associated with some significant legend.” 

“Well, there is a tradition in the country, as you 
are not unaware, of a fairy goat which bestows power 
and happiness on those who can seize and hold her, 
while she leaves in the hearts of those who merely 












82 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


catch a glimpse of her nothing save bitterness and 
insatiable longing. Such, at least, is the version of 
the simple-minded folk and of the poets, the version 
told at the evening gatherings while the women are 
sorting the almonds, or at the mill when the men are 
pressing the black olives. ‘ 

“But practical people have found another one. 
Disinclined to believe in the supernatural, they think 
that this name of Golden Goat is merely a symbol- 
ical way of speaking of a real treasure, hidden in the 
neighborhood of the chapel where we now are, and 
which could be found by digging in the right place. 

“ So but few years pass without some one’s trying 
to make a liazel-rod bend in the old cemetery near 
the fountain. The lunatics, with their pickaxes and 
mattocks, have nearly demolished the chapel, as you 
see, and sacrilegiously upturned the' bones of the her- 
mits who sleep there. And only the other day I was 
obliged to drive out of my door, by threatening him 
with a cudgel, a parishioner who wanted to bring me 
here at the stroke of midnight to repeat the Black 
Mass.” 

“ So, you’re not a believer?” . . . 

“ I believe only in God and the Pope. But, after 
all, according to popular opinion, the treasure in ques- 
tion would be a Saracen treasure, and, according to 
you, the Saracens left so many things in Puget that I 
don’t see why, on their departure, they shouldn’t have 
left a treasure.” 

He laughed and added : 

“ I thought this would deserve your notice ; I even, 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


88 


on the chance, put in my pocket an old parchment 
copy-book, which Monsieur Honnorat lent me and I 
haven’t yet taken time to return. A journal; it dates 
from the fifteenth century. You will find information 
about the chapel and the fountain. Only — don’t say 
a word of this to Monsieur Honnorat or to Madem- 
oiselle Norette ! — the Gazans, I don’t know why, are 
not fond of having people talk much about the Golden 
Goat.” 


XX 


THE JOURNAL 

The abbe hesitated as lie gave me the booh. He 
seemed to regret having offered it. And then, what 
was the motive of this express injunction to say noth- 
ing about it to Monsieur Honnorat or to Norette ? 

I started, I remember, yes! started visibly, when 
the abbe, thinking no harm, uttered the words the 
Golden Goat,” which had haunted me so long. 

Had he noticed my emotion ? Did he, too, like Gal- 
far, suspect me of plotting the capture of the treas- 
ures buried in Piiget-Maure ? 

Spite of his urgency, I refused to go home with 
him to eat the hare. On the pretext of important 
work, letters to write, I failed even to spend the even- 
ing at the Gazans’. 

So here I am, in my abominable tavern, in the act 
of dining opposite to Ganteaume, who is watching 
me and wondering what can be the contents of the 
precious volume laid on the table near me, from 
which I never turn my eyes. 

But Ganteaume will not have his curiosity gratified. 

Something tells me that under this worm-eaten, 
fawn-colored leather binding, nibbled by the mites 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


85 


and soft as tinder, I shall find, if not the solution, at 
least the premises of the problem whose mystery oc- 
cupies and attracts me more and more. 

I wait until I am in my own room, and there — lis- 
tening to Mise Jano’s plaintive bleating, turning my 
back on the landscape, always magnificent at this 
hour when the sun is sinking behind the hills and 
the sea, as much excited as a person who dreads to 
find an ancient mysterious box empty — I unfasten, 
with trembling fingers, the faded ribbon that closes 
the covers of the book. 

The abbe did not deceive me. 

It is one of those journals formerly in general use 
among Provencal families, containing on its revered 
pages memoranda in which, amid the births, deaths, 
and marriages, were noted, day by day, the great and 
small events of the country or the household. 

But these domestic archives of the Gazan family 
have the advantage of going back beyond the fif- 
teenth century. If, preceding a few blank pages at 
the end, the last blackened ones revealed, in their 
delicate yet firm chirography, the hand of a rich 
bourgeoise, a virtuous contemporary of the Pompa- 
dour, the regular, ornate, magisterial Gothic letters 
at the commencement evidently came from the pen 
of the clerk of the chapel, or the village notary, writ- 
ing in obedience to the dictation of the mistress of 
the castle. 

A fortnight ago it would have been a banquet, a reg- 
ular orgy, for me to devour with my eyes, examining 
and commentating, at the risk of being surprised by 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


dawn, the yellow pages where, from Norette’s great- 
grandfather, I can, year by year, almost day by day, 
go back to the very origin of the family, the distant 
ancestors who came from the East. 

What a fountain-head of documents, what a mine 
for my studies ! But, to-day, I am in search of some- 
thing else : an item, a bit of information relating to 
the hermitage, the fountain, the enigmatical, undeci- 
pherable sundial of the old wizard doctor. 

Unfortunately, many pages, which seem to have 
been intentionally torn out, are missing. 

There is no trace of the legend, nothing but a few 
lines stating that, in the year 1503, the noble Mel-' 
chior Gazan, with benevolent intent and to secure 
the repose of the souls of “ the two dead men,” grants 
permission to the hermits, for the present and as long 
as it shall flow, to conduct by earthen pipes to their 
hermitage and chapel, on condition of suffering those 
who pass along the road to use it and its overflow, 
the water of the spring belonging to him and gush- 
ing naturally from the place called “ The Goat’s 


Rock.” 




XXI 

THE FOUNTAIN 

That the treasure once existed is certain ; legend, 
tradition, certain facts I have discovered, all attest it. 

That it exists still is probable; how could the secret 
of its discovery have been kept ? 

But how to find it . . . that’s the puzzle ! Perhaps 
its fate is to remain underground till the Judgment- 
day, dull and useless, like so many lost treasures whose 
metals and gems will never more be brought into the 
living joys of the sunlight. 

Yet one morning, unintentionally, led by some in- 
stinctive impulse rather than by my will, I climbed 
the hills towards the hermitage. 


88 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


The sun, which had risen above the horizon long 
before, but was still invisible behind the mountains, 
tinged their summits with rose-color. Reaching the 
fountain, I stood watching its two masks spouting the 
water and the drops falling on the filaments of moss. 

Suddenly the sun appeared, flooding the plateau 
with a sheet of white light, and the shadow of the 
little monument, clear and straight, stretched to my 
feet. 

Then — memory has these chances, ideas have these 
Sudden associations — thinking of the Latin distich on 
the sundial, I suddenly recollected — where had I 
read it ? — the adventure of Robert Guiscard in Sicily 
and the marble column, the statue crowned with a 
bronze circlet, on which was engraved “ On the first 
of May, at sunrise, I shall have a crown of gold.” A 
Saracen, one of Count Robert’s prisoners, penetrated 
the mysterious meaning of the words, for Robert, by 
his instructions, having had the earth dug up on the 
first of May at sunrise in the place marked by the 
end of the shadow cast by the statue, found, says the 
chronicler, a great and very rich treasure. 

Evidently, if the inscription traced by the old dis- 
ciple of Mesmer on the sundial of the hermitage has 
ever meant anything, and if the treasure still exists, 
the shadow of some object must mark the place; 

Why not the shadow of the fountain, since it is 
called “The Fountain of the Golden Goat?” 

The people who come at night to dig in the earth 
around it certainly are not far wrong, save for their 
belief in the hazel-wand and the Black Mass. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


They burn, as the saying goes, but their efforts will 
remain useless, for they have no better knowledge 
than I of the hour and the time when the shadow 
would turn informer. 

All signs are lacking, the inscription itself is ef- 
faced, and the abbe who once read it retains but a 
dim memory of its purport, just sufficient to excite 
my curiosity, but not enough to guide me. 

Less fortunate than Robert Guiscard, not having, 
alas, at my service a Saracen prisoner, one of those 
sons of Hagar, who by heredity are experts in divin- 
ing the secret of figures, I will give up the treasure 
of Puget-Maure. 

And, laughing at myself a little, amused by my day- 
dreams, I stretched myself under a tree with a desire 
to forget the treasure, while the fountain, crossed by 
slanting sunbeams, seemed, a besetting vision, to roll 
in its crystal waters, amid its foam, diamonds and bits 
of gold. 



XXII 

THE GOAT’S ROCK 

Since that time I have been reflecting ; for this 
matter is becoming as fascinating as the pursuit of a 
problem. 

If the treasure itself, or the entrance to the cavern 
which — if certain stories may be believed — contains 
it, can be found in the neighborhood of the fount- 
ain it might be discovered by carefully sounding the 
narrow space of earth within the shadow — longer or 
shorter, according to the seasons — cast by fhe pyra- 
mid. 

But I am now convinced that the treasure is not 
hidden there. 

The fountain is barely four centuries old, and is not 
contemporaneous with the treasure. 

Besides, a child would have thought of it at once; 
the name, Fountain of the Golden Goat, applied to 
the little monument erected for the hermits, would 
have no great significance, since it was evidently 
called so by association, in memory of the Goat’s 
Rock, whence flowed the original spring. 

At any rate it is an easy matter to find the rock. 
The pipes having broken during the four centuries in 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


91 


many a place, I need ,only follow for half an hour 
along the barren hill-side the green line traced on the 
earth by the comfreys and shave-grass, plants whose 
presence reveals the vicinity of water, to reach a 
plateau strewn with ruins, probably the remains of 
some stronghold, and in sight of a limestone rock 
very singular in form, at whose feet the crystal wa- 
ters of the spring gush forth. 

This plateau, an irregular quadrangle, accessible 
only from the side down which the outlet of the 
spring flows, is surrounded on the three others by 
cliffs crowned with ruined walls. 

The earth echoes under the tread ; there are caverns, 
either natural or hollowed by the hand of man, with- 
in the cliffs. Here, not in the hermitage, but here 
amid these lonely rocks, must be the abode of the 
Golden Goat. 

Yet the difficulty is increasing. 

To dig hap-liazard would be folly ; the whole pla- 
teau, excepting a thin layer of broken bricks and peb- 
bles, is a shelf of living rock. 

Besides, the digging would not be merely on the 
plateau. The rock overhangs the escarpment, and 
it is along its slope that, at this time of the day, as 
though over a gigantic dial, its shadow moves. 

Is not this an illusion ? The peak of the rock, 
clearly outlined, points to an inaccessible black hole 
yawning like the mouth of a cavern. What if 
chance had aided me? What if I had arrived at the 
very instant the shadow pointed to the mysterious 
entrance. . . , 


92 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Just at that moment a quick call, “ Here, Warrior !” 
sounding clearly in the solitude of the place, startled 
me. 

It was an old shepherd calling his dog. 

Absorbed in my day-dreams, I had not heard him 
come. 

Without lifting his hat, which remained as immov- 
able on his peasant skull as that of a grandee of Spain, 
he gave me the Provengal greeting, “God be with 
you!” Then leaving Warrior to follow at the heels 
of the five or six sheep that were nibbling the scanty 
herbage, and paying no further heed to me than if I 
did not exist, he began to smoke his pipe in short, 
regular puffs, with his eyes fixed on the horizon and 
his legs dangling over the precipice. 







94 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


1 y scraped acquaintance with Peu-Parle, the nickname 
bestowed on this silent man. 

His taciturnity is excessive. Briefly, as is his cus- 
tom, he explains his reasons for it. 

“What’s the use of talking when there is nothing 
to say? Above all, what’s the use of talking, even 
when there is something to say, since, nine times out 
of ten, it would be wiser to keep still ?” 

And Peu-Parle does keep still, to his intense de- 
light, spending his time, as he did the first day I 
met him, near the Goat’s Rock, always sitting in 
the same place with his eyes fixed upon the same 
spot. 

People say Peu-Parle knows the secret. 

That is why he goes up the hill every morning, 
winter and summer, and is seen, for whole days to- 
gether, gazing at a spot known to him alone, the re- 
treat of the Golden Goat. 

Peu-Parle might be as rich as Croesus if he desired, 
lie doesn’t ; the mere idea satisfies him. The jealous 
guardian of a treasure he scorns, refusing to touch it, 
dreading to let others approach it, he has thus lived 
forty years, happy and ragged, with his dream and 
his chimera. 

Peu-Parle is reputed to be a wizard. The old 
women who go out to pick lavender have seen, at 
nightfall, when the sun has set, strange figures mov- 
ing before his fire. 

Men, even brave ones, do not like to hear at a late 
hour the shrill bark of his dog Warrior, and the noise 
of his heavy shoes on the stones. 






96 THE GOLDEN GOAT 

In other respects he is a worthy man and respect- 
ed — as we respect the powerful. 

One day Pen-Parle talked with me. 

I had offered him some tobacco to fill his pipe, 
which, for lack of money, he was sucking while it 
was empty. The attention pleased him, and we en- 
tered into conversation. 

“ So you’ve come for the treasure ? Don’t say no ; 
I talk little, but I hear a great deal, and I sometimes 
go down to the village. You’ve come a very long 
distance, it seems. Good ! The King of Majorca’s 
treasure is worth a few leagues’ travel.” 

“ The King of Majorca ?” 

“ Why, yes ; an old king who came here by sea, and 
was afterwards obliged to fly. You know these sto- 
ries better than I do, and yet make me chatter. But 
no matter ! Peu-Parle’s name is Peu-Parle ; he tells 
only what he chooses, and he guessed it all the other 
day while seeing you watch the shadow. 

“ What harm has the Golden Goat done you ? 
Why not leave it in peace on the mountain? It 
comes and goes in the moonlight, drinking the j^ure 
water and harming nobody. 

“ After it has been captured there is little gain. 

“ In captivity the Golden Goat will revenge itself, 
for gold is the source of every trouble. For its sake 
men hate one another; for its sake women do not 
wed those who love them. In the hermits’ close 
there <ire two tombs — Monsieur Honnorat knows 
them well — the tombs of two cousins, who died a vio- 
lent death for having desired to catch the Golden Goat. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


97 


“ Let the gold stay hidden, let the Golden Goat re- 
main free. 

“if, as people believe, I, Peu-Parle, by just raising 
a finger, could make the riches the rock covers again 
come 'forth to the light of day, I would not lift the 
finger, I would let the wealth lie. . . 

Peu-Parle continued for several minutes longer 
the apocalyptic speech, in which the fabulous Golden 
Goat mingled, like a vague vision, with the more tan- 
gible treasures forgotten by the King of Majorca. 

Then, doubtless fatigued by this effort, he whistled 
to Warrior, rose, and, clasping my hand, said : 

“ It would be a fine thing to succeed in this enter- 
prise. I wish you good -luck. Once, in my young 
days, I tried it ; but courage won’t suffice ; there 
must be a woman who loves you. Men plan and cal- 
culate, woman has the golden key : win Norette’s 
love.” 


XX I Y 


A BOUQUET 

This is turning into a fairy-tale. So, according to 
old Peu-Parle, to obtain the treasure I must first mas- 
querade — at my age ! — as Prince Charming, in which 
case I should have for the Sleeping Beauty Madem- 
oiselle Norette. 

But Norette is no princess. Monsieur Honnorat’s 
house, though picturesque, bears only the faintest re- 
semblance to the castles buried in the depths of en- 
chanted forests, and I have no desire to play suitor 
to a little peasant maid for the sake of mere illusive 
hopes. 

For these hopes are indeed visionary, and I myself 
find great amusement in analyzing the strange turmoil 
that — in consequence, perhaps, of the present isolation 
of my life — has gradually taken possession of my soul. 

What ! Because, one idle morning, the idea occurred 
to me of devoting more or less erudite study to the 
Arabs of Provence; because I found pleasure in search- 
ing for the light traces left in the country by their 
passage; because, on the day of my arrival, the mists of 
overheated air, the intoxicating odor of the resin and 
lavender gave me, for a few seconds, an hallucination 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


99 


resulting naturally from a dream ; because, Mise Jano 
having lost it, I picked up a bell inscribed with char- 
acters that seemed to me singular ; I, more credulous 
than a peasant, more visionary than a shepherd, am 
wasting my time in seeking means to secure, in the 
depths of a cavern doubtless guarded by a dragon, the 
riches left by the King of Majorca. 

While pondering over these thoughts, I was me- 
chanically descending the mountain, but on the side 
opposite to the one by which I had climbed it. 

A narrow, almost invisible path winds along amid 
mossy rocks and herbage. For, while the southern 
slope, scorched by the sun, is barren, the northern 
one, almost always in the shadow, and constantly mois- 
tened by subterranean waters oozing undoubtedly 
from the same mysterious reservoir that feeds the 
spring of the Goat’s Rock, looks delightfully verdant. 

Our mountains show these contrasts, and, in certain 
privileged corners, spring often lingers, while, a few 
steps away, the leaves and grass are withered by the 
fires of summer. 

Flowers are growing in this place, delicate Alpine 
flowers, of unknown species. I gathered some, and 
finally made a bouquet which, for better preservation, 
I encircled with brakes and maidenhair, a precaution 
that enabled me to carry it safely to the village. 

Monsieur Honnorat, whom I met walking alone in 
the square, admired it greatly on account of its rar- 
ity at this season. I told him I had gathered it for 
Mademoiselle Korette. 

“You’ve chosen a bad time! This is washing-day, 


100 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


and on washing-days the house is uninhabitable. I 
took flight, and dared not even go to look for my pipe, 
which was unluckily left behind, Horette and Sala- 
dine are hanging out in the court-yard. After all, 
there is no harm in trying, perhaps a bouquet will put 
her in better humor.” 

Saladine, who had the advantage of a tall figure, 
was sulkily hanging on lines, that crossed one another 
in every direction from corner to corner between the 
arcades, the sheets which Horette passed to her, and 
Ganteaume religibusly passed to Norette. 

Monsieur Honnorat, somewhat emboldened by my 
presence, cautiously advanced. 

“ Norette ; see, Norette ! Here is a beautiful bou- 
quet somebody has brought to you.” 

I don’t know what there was about my bouquet, 
which looked like any other, but at the mere sight 
of the poor little flowers Ganteaume reddened to his 
ears, Saladine darted an angry glance at me, and No- 
rette, who was already clasping them in her trembling 
fingers, seemed strangely moved by so trivial an at- 
tention. 

“ Let us be off now, I have my pipe !” said worthy 
Monsieur Honnorat. 

While following him, I was thinking of Peu-Parle’s 
enigmatical words : “ Woman lias the golden key : win 
Norette’s love.” 

Has the old shepherd, in his character of sorcerer, 
seen things I have not perceived? Can it be that, 
without my suspecting it, from mere caprice, Madem- 
oiselle Norette loves me? 


XXV 

SKIPPER RUF’s SEA-URCIIINS 


A surprise awaited me. 

Whom did we meet at the door? Skipper Ruf, 
still smooth-shaven, still tanned, carrying in each hand 
a basket of freshly caught sea-urchins, whose chestnut- 
colored prickles were moving feebly amid the sea- 
weeds packed around them. 

This time Monsieur Honnorat dares to face Xorette 
and Saladine. What are wash-days and women com- 
pared to a friend like Skipper Ruf and sea-urchins ? 

Dinner is to be prepared at once, for sea-urchins 
won’t keep. I am invited, and so is the abbe, to 
whom Skipper Ruf sends Ganteaume. 

Saladine, conquered at last, will dry her linen in 
the garden. We all sit around a table in the court- 
yard with the white arcades, under the vine whose 
rough trunk, from which the bark is peeling, looks like 
an aged boa dying. 

Skipper Ruf, fearless of prickles, bravely opens one 
after another as we break eggs. 

One ! two ! and the star of orange flesh appears 
swimming in a blackish mixture of salt-water and 
triturated algae. 


\ 


I0i 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


The abbe, a man with a mountaineer’s prejudices, 
dislikes to eat these living creatures. I, a novice in 
the art, pour the algse and sea-water into my plate, 
leaving only the yellow flesh, which I dig out with my 
knife. Monsieur Honnorat and Skipper Ruf laugh 
at us. They are not so fastidious, but swallow the 
whole — algae, water, stars. They scrape the shells with 
bits of bread; then, shining with satisfaction, Monsieur 
Ilonnorat, his beard dripping, exclaims : 

“ It is like eating the sea !” 

“ Still, the right way to eat a sea-urchin isn’t sitting 
within four walls,” Skipper Ruf interrupts, “ but on 
the shore, or on the boat, while listening to the beat 
of the waves. At six o’clock in the morning, when the 
sun is scattering the fog, if I can have a tender roll 
and a bottle of claret, I’ll finish my six dozen and 
look down upon Rothschild.” 

Mademoiselle Norette had set the bouquet on the 
table, directly opposite to her, and lowers her eyes, 
blushing, every time I look at her or the flowers. 

She is very lively this evening, too. 

While we are talking about the sea, she describes 
the impression made upon her by the first sight of the 
Mediterranean. 

Saladine was bringing her back from the nurse. 
“Do you remember, Saladine?” But Saladine does 
not answer. Ho matter ! Norette goes on : “ So, when 
we reached the Mas de la Yiste, where the whole 
horizon opens, I, a little savage who had never seen 
anything but mountains, asked, ‘ What is that big 
blue field?’ 4 The sea,’ Saladine told me. ‘And the 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


103 


white sheep oil it?’ ‘Those are the ships and their 
sails.’ ” 

Mademoiselle Norette, a little embarrassed at having 
made this important speech, to hide her confusion 
took up the bouquet placed beside her glass, and the 
simple action so deeply impressed Ganteaume that he 
dropped a pile of plates — old Varages, almost as deli- 
cately decorated as Moustiers — to the despair of Sal- 
adine, who was furious at having such an assistant. 

The fact is that, from the beginning of the meal, my 
Ganteaume, poor bewildered page, had done nothing 
but heap blunder on blunder. And I wonder why — 
perhaps Mademoiselle Norette knows — a few flowers 
presented by me possess the strange power of making 
him so absent-minded. 



After the meal, Skipper Ruf, leaving Monsieur 
Honnorat and the abbe to discuss hunting over a 
bottle of myrtle-berry wine — Saladine’s specific for 
promoting digestion — called me confidentially into a 
corner. 

I thought he wanted, like a good father, to inquire 
a]bout Ganteaume’s behavior and the way the latter 
discharged the various duties that are supposed to at- 
tach him to my person. 

Nothing of the sort ! Skipper Ruf is charged with 
an embassy to me. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


105 


At the close of the coral campaign, after stopping 
to embrace his. wife as he passed the little Camargue, 
Skipper Ruf 'was obliged to push on to Nice to sell, 
on behalf of the fraternity, the products of the expe- 
dition, which were owned in partnership. 

As usual, he met some Genoese merchants, who 
were buying the unpolished coral for the factories, 
and were lodged, according to custom, at a tavern in 
the ancient city bearing the sign of “The Antico 
Limon Verde.” 

“Heaven save you from those Italian taverns, sir. 
They smell of cheese and are thick with flies. But 
you mustn’t mind such things, if you want to sell to 
the Genoese.” 

At any rate, the bargain was made, and Skipper 
Ruf, his money tightly fastened in his pouch, was 
preparing to go after the obligatory drink of Asti 
spumante (a wretched little wine that upsets the 
stomach and isn’t to be compared to our good black- 
currant ratafia !), when from a table in the darkest cor- 
ner he heard words, snatches of talk, that made him 
prick up his ears. 

Some plot was being formed. Monsieur Honnorat 
and Puget-Maure were mentioned — nay, my name and 
Norette’s were repeated several times. 

“In my calling of fisherman,” Skipper Ruf went 
on, “ which keeps me always in the sunshine on the 
glittering water, I am not much used to seeing in the 
dark. Yet, by dint of opening my eyes like the cats, 
I finally distinguished, among half a dozen bullies who 
were silently listening, an old fellow in a surtout, who 


106 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


looked like a juggler or a notary, and a young man 
with his back turned towards me, whom at first I did 
not recognize. 

“‘We must make an end of it,’ said the young 
man ; ‘ after all, the person in question wants to rob 
us, and thieves must be put out of the way.’ 

“‘No doubt,’ replied the other, ‘ after, we have 
made the requisite outlay and should the thing be- 
come necessary. Yet I think, at all hazards, it would 
be far better, to have the person in question act 
with us.’ 

“ ‘ But he won’t.’ 

“ ‘ Perhaps he will.’ 

“ ‘ No, I shouldn’t desire it now, even if he did.’ 

“ The young man had started up in a furious rage, 
making the bottles and glasses dance under the heavy 
blow he dealt the table. I recognized him. It was 
Galfar, in shiny boots and a new coat, like a man who 
has just inherited property. 

“‘Skipper Ruff ‘ Galfar V ‘What fair wind 
brings you to these parts?’ ‘ The wind from the Cape ; 
I’m just from the Antibes with the vessel to sell our 
coral.’ ‘ Ah, so much the better!’ ‘And you’re go- 
ing back ?’ ‘ To Puget-Maure.’ 

“At the name of Puget-Maure Galfar cast a dark 
glance at me.- ‘ True, I forgot ; your little Ganteaume 
is up there. In that case you must surely know my 
cousin Hon norat’s suitor. Well, tell him from me 
that I forbid him — do you understand ? — forbid him 
to marry Norette ! And, if you overheard our conver- 
sation just now, tell him, too, that it is dangerous for 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


107 


people to try to enter our families ; that the Golden 
Goat lias brought more than one misfortune upon the 
Gazans and the Galfars, and that if its hoofs, on 
moonlit nights, leave prints of gold upon the stones, 
red stains, drops of blood, have also often been found 
in the places where it has passed . 5 55 

Skipper Ruf was much excited. 

“But what lias this to do with Mademoiselle No- 
rette ?” I asked. 

“ Listen ! I don’t know whether you want the 
treasure and are paying court to her on that account. 
But I formerly heard that the secret is transmitted 
from mother to daughter in the Gazan and Galfar 
families, who always intermarry. Mademoiselle No- 
rette, therefore, would have it from the late Madame 
Honnorat, her mother, who was a Galfar. 

“ hTow, you know what is to be done , 55 Skipper 
Ruf concluded. " I foresaw this. You were warned. 
What are you seeking in this land of savages ? Why 
not go back to-morrow to little Camargue, where Tar- 
dive is expecting us ; catch, with Ganteaume’s help, 
the castagnore (Saint Peter’s fish), and rest quietly at 
night, free from anxious cares, lulled to sleep by the 
distant tinkling of the bells of Arlatan ? 55 


XXYII 


SENTIMENTAL PERPLEXITIES 

Shall I stayj Or shall I not ? 

Ought I to listen to Skipper Ruf’ s wise counsels or 
to persist in searching for a treasure which, perhaps, 
may prove visionary ? 

The alternative perplexes me. 

If I leave Puget -Maure, I shall seem — and the 
thought annoys me — to fear Galfar and fly from his 
threats. Yet I don’t feel especially proud when I 
think of the farcical part which, in the other case, I 
should be forced to play. 

People here believe that, from motives of interest 
(yes, interest, since there is a fortune at stake), I am 
feigning love for Mademoiselle Xorette. 

I remember the feeling of pity, blended with con- 
tempt, I used to bestow, in what we term society, 
upon people worthy in all other respects, who would 
not have lied to a man, yet who shamelessly cheated 
themselves to prove that they loved some insignifi- 
cant little girl whom they wanted solely for her 
dowry. 

And the hapless fellows ended by believing them- 
selves captivated, like the hired mourners who, dazed 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


109 


by their own lamentations, actually shed real tears on 
the grave of a dead person whom they never knew. 

Sucli a course would be extremely repugnant to 
me, though, after all, with Mademoiselle Horette as 
mistress and guardian of the Golden Goat, my case 
would have an indescribably chivalric charm. 

Alas ! in how short a time w T e are overmastered. 

Here am I, in a state of melancholy at the bare idea 
of leaving this village with its crooked streets, this old 
house which has become mine, this Donkey’s Passage, 
whose sharp stones for some time have seemed soft to 
me. 

And Mise Jano, a supernatural vision that ap- 
peared in the valley to bid me welcome. And Mon- 
sieur Honnorat, and Saladine . . . 

I dare not add : and Mademoiselle Norette, lest I 
should see into my own heart too clearly. 

For Mademoiselle Norette is certainly a charming 
girl. Until yesterday at dinner I had never looked 
at her, and could not have told whether her eyes were 
black or blue. 

They are black, a velvety black, with brown shad- 
ows, somewhat languishing and with a shade of 
mournful tenderness ; the eyes of a happy slave con- 
tent in her bondage. The beautiful Scheherazade 
must have had such eyes. 

Galfar really pays me a compliment in considering 
me worthy of their notice, yet I have made little 
effort to win their favor, nor has Galfar, for that 
matter. 

Strange gallants indeed; both equally ill dressed, 
8 


110 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


both looking like brigands ; his ribbed velvet jacket 
need not fear comparison with my coarse serge sack. 

No matter, blessed be Galfar ! But for Galfar and 
his jealousy I should not yet know Norette. 

Norette ! How delightful it would-be to have this 
virgin soul wholly one’s own. 

I feel a thrill of delicious freshness in my heart, an 
almost physical sensation, as I remember her artless 
blush and quickened breathing when I offered her the 
bouquet. 

To imagine yourself beloved is the beginning of 
love. With Norette loving me, it seems as if I shall 
be unable to help loving Norette. 

But how am I to know 1 I believe I have found a 
way. 

Skipper Ruf is going home to-morrow. I will start 
with him, as honesty commands. 

But if Mademoiselle Norette urges me to stay, if 
she confesses . . . ah! then I shall simply leave the 
future to fate. My conscience will be clear. You 
can’t be unkind to a charming girl who loves you, 
merely on the pretext that she may be the heiress of 
the King of Majorca’s treasures. 


XXVIII 



IN THIT GARDEN 

Monsieur Honnorat prides 
himself on a garden which 
he owns at the foot of his 
tower. 

A garden ? Xo ! A piece 
of the rock smoothed off, sur- 
rounded by a wall, and overhanging the precipice. 

The wall keeps within its bounds a little vegetable 
soil collected in the clefts which, mingled with the 
bits of the rock itself, friable stones in the act of dis- 
integrating and turning to dust in the sunshine, forms 
a mould which elsewhere would not suffice to feed the 


112 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


roots of nettles and briers, but in this favored climate 
satisfies three orange-trees, a laurel, a border of rose- 
mary, some fruits and vegetables.' 

The whole is watered by the scanty supply from a 
cistern, which Monsieur Honnorat husbands very par- 
simoniously. 

As twilight approaches, I come to the parapet of 
my terrace, with no definite motive save to feast my 
eyes upon the changing splendors of the horizon 
glowing in hues of crimson ; perhaps, too, because 
just under the spot I have chosen stands a stone 
bench shaded by a laurel, where Mademoiselle Norette 
sometimes likes to sit. 

As the afternoon has been burning hot and the 
flowers drooped, Horette and Saladine dispense the 
cistern-water very generously, to the despair of Mon- 
sieur Honnorat, who protests against it. 

Mademoiselle Norette is laughing. Their voices 
rise in the cool evening air. “When the cock is 
touched, one would say his blood is being shed,” cries 
Saladine, pointing to Monsieur Honnorat. 

And mademoiselle adds : 

“ Papa sows his beans for the sake of glory, I water 
them out of pity.” 

Then Monsieur Honnorat, still disputing with Sala- 
dine, goes out, and mademoiselle is left alone. 

I come down to the garden. 

“I saw you, I was waiting for you,” says Norette. 
She speaks calmly, frankly, with no false shame, as if 
sure of herself and of me. 

But &t the first allusion to departure, I saw hey 


THE GOLDEN GOAT * - 113 

suddenly turn pale, witli the dull pallor peculiar to 
brunettes, which makes them resemble statues. 

For an instant I felt alarmed. 

Standing motionless, with downcast lashes, doubt- 
less to keep back her tears, little Norette seemed 
turned to marble. And when she looked at me there 
was an expression of intense sadness in her swimming 
eyes. 

She silently signed to me to wait, then went to her 
room, brought back the box of wishes, the symbolic 
coffer containing her maiden hopes, and having opened 
and emptied it, showed me, tossed in pell-mell with 
the egg, the salt, and the distaff, twenty bouquets pre- 
cisely like the one I gave her, some still fresh, others 
already withered. 

“ My flowers, my poor flowers,” she sighed. “ I 
was so pleased to find them every morning on this 
bench, cool and bathed with dew. I warmed them on 
my heart, knowing they came from you. I thought : 
he dares not give them to me himself; but he is 
brave, he is a man, some day courage will come to 
him. And it did come, for yesterday, in my father’s 
presence, you offered me a bouquet of these very blos- 
soms. And now you are going to leave us ! What 
do you care for our friendship? What are Norette’s 
tears to you ?” 

H^r wrath was melting into weeping, and, without 
clearly understanding the matter, yet with a thrill of 
delight, I could not help smiling when I heard No- 
rette, clasped in my arms, exclaim between two sobs, 
in the tones of her childhood : 


114 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


“Oh, I’m a miserable girl, and it serves me right 
for having so dearly loved a man I hardly knew.” 

What did I reply ? I don’t know. But when we 
left the garden Mademoiselle Norette was no longer 
weeping, and, spite of my amazed denials, it had been 
proved that it was I who, for twenty days, had dropped 
a bouquet every evening on Norette’s favorite bench. 

Satan evidently meddling with my love-affairs, 
and this bouquet business covers some bit of deviltry. 

Let us not search into it. The better way is to 
allow matters to take their course. Must we under- 
stand things in order to be happy \ 



XXIX 

ganteaume’s love-affairs 

Yet these bouquets neither dropped from the shy 
nor grew on the bench ! 

No one except the Gazans enters the garden, and 
no one save Ganteaume and me has the key of the 
terrace. 

I am very sure, unless I believe myself to be a som- 
nambulist, that I never threw a bouquet from the top 
of the tower. No one is left except Ganteaume. 
Can Ganteaume . . . 

I had noticed his admiration of Norette, his eager- 
ness to serve her, and his ill - concealed emotion on 
washing-day at the sight of the flowers I proffered. 

Ganteaume must be the culprit. 

I called him. He came, repentant and downcast. 

“ Oho, Master Ganteaume,” I said, “ is this the way 
you understand the duties of a page ? Ho you think 
I shall allow a person who is attending me to carry 
on wretched intrigues in the house which affords us 
its hospitality ?” 

The solemnity of such a beginning put the poor 
fellow entirely out of countenance, and, sobbing bit- 
terly, he confessed a whole series of misdeeds. 

While I supposed him to be rambling about the 


116 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


streets of Puget-Maure with other boys of his own 
age, fishing for trout in the stream, or, a rare capture, 
taking a brood of rock-sparrows from the nest, Gan- 
teaume, already ambitious, dreaming of the loftiest 
destinies, undertook, on his own account, the capture 
of the Golden Goat, 

He has become intimate with Peu-Parle. The old 
fool honors him with his confidence, and Master Gan- 
teaume, in return, has told him my plans. 

Ganteaume in the evening learns the names of the 
stars ; then, sitting among the lavender, he and Peu- 
Parle hold long conversations about the King of Ma- 
jorca and the Goat. 

Ganteaume firmly believes in the existence of the 
treasure. He knows, too, from Peu-Parle, curious de- 
tails of which I was ignorant. 

It is really, as I had conjectured, the shadow of a 
stone, which, at a certain hour of the day and a cer- 
tain time of the year, marks the spot where the dig- 
ging must be done. 

The treasure itself will not be found there, but a 
small iron box containing mysterious papers. With 
these papers success is certain. Only nothing can be 
done without Mademoiselle Korette, who possesses 
the talisman on which is graven the secret of the 
shadow. 

“A bell, perhaps?” 

“ Yes, it seems to me Peu-Parle did say bell.” 

Ganteaume, however, assures me that he never 
meant to take entire pos’session of the treasure. His 
intention was to divide it into two parts : one for me, 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


117 


the other for Skipper Ruf. As a reward, the boy 
would be perfectly content with the happiness of 
marrying Horette, and being always with her. 

It was in the hope of pleasing Horette that, by tak- 
ing counsel with Peu-Parle, he had devised the gal- 
lant attention of the bouquets which Horette had at- 
tributed to me. 

But Ganteaume will understand henceforward that 
these dreams cannot be realized. He silently re- 
nounced Horette, without a word of complaint, when 
he saw that she loved me. 

How, disheartened by the melting of his dream, he 
entreats me to keep him, not to send him home with 
Skipper Ruf. 

Joy is the mother of indulgence ; I forgive my 
fourteen-year-old rival. 

He wipes aw T ay his tears, and, trying to smile, 
thanks me. 

But Horette evidently has his heart, and the w T ound 
still bleeds. 

Alas! who would have imagined that Ganteaume, 
hapless Ganteaume, would be the first victim of the 
capricious Golden Goat? 


XXX 


THE queen’s FLOWERS 

A different Norette ! 

As she passes me smiling, alert, and gay, I should 
hardly recognize the half-peasant girl whose uncon- 
scious timidity disguised itself beneath a certain blunt- 
ness. 

Now Mademoiselle Norette has no shyness. She 
is perfectly at ease, though Monsieur Honnorat has 
not been informed of our mutual love ; had we been 
wedded two years her manner would be the same. 

This morning she said to me : 

“ Your flowers are beautiful; I love them, but I 
know where even more beautiful ones grow .’ 5 

“ More beautiful?” 

“The Queen’s flowers. Yours are only mountain 
blossoms. Mine are from the fairy garden an Eastern 
princess had around her palace.” 

On winter evenings when, with one stone in their 
laps and another for a hammer, the girls, singing mer- 
rily, crack the bitter almonds, you would hear all 
sorts of marvellous stories told about the place by the 
peasant poachers and the women who gather litter 
and withered leaves. 


T1IE GOLDEN GOAT 


119 


The garden lias become waste -land, and there is 
nothing left of the once splendid building except 
a massive black rampart and here and there a few 
fallen stones. But as soon as the pleasant weather 
comes flowers, unlike any the people here ever saw, 
grow up under the ancient rampart between the old 
stones. They undoubtedly come from those the Queen 
had in her garden, whose race has been perpetuated 
up there close to the sky. 

“ Is it so very high — up there, near the sky ?” 

“Very high,” Norette answered, smiling ; “even 
higher than the Goat’s Rock. But where would not 
people climb to find that Arabian Nights flower-gar- 
den, with its varied, countless blossoms the color of 
the sun and the dew, unearthly flowers, that bear no 
resemblance to the coarser ones blooming in our val- 
ley.” 

“And Mademoiselle Norette does not resemble ” 

“ No doubt !” Norette answered. “ That’s the rea- 
son we are going this afternoon. Ganteaume will ac- 
company us.” 

“ Ganteaume?” 

“Would you prefer Saladine?” 

Three o’clock ! The heat is beginning to lessen ; it 
is s time to start. 

Mise Jano, delighted to be at liberty, frisks before 
us. Ganteaume, in rather a downhearted mood, car- 
ries the basket of provisions. 

Norette makes the sign of the cross as we pass the 
cemetery where “ the two dead men ” sleep, and, leav- 
ing on our left the hermitage and the Goat’s Rock, at 


120 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 



whose foot I recognize Peu-Par- 
le’s tall figure, we are soon in 
the midst of the mountains. 

On either hand tower blue- 
gray cliffs, from whose sides, 
here and there, fragments of 
rock have fallen, leaving large 
white patches, which the wild 
everlasting embroiders with its 
pale silvery foliage and stiff 
clusters of gold. 

At the foot of the rocks 
grow huge thistles like acan- 


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. 1 1 * \ 
i iff \ 


mm 

fev/r J-* 

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THE GOLDEN GOAT 


121 


thus plants, juniper-bushes with violet berries, gnarled 
carob-trees, whose dark foliage is adorned by pods 
shining as if they were varnished, and pines whose 
low boughs, cut by the hatchet, weep amber tears 
in the sunshine. 

The whole scene, amid the penetrating odor of rose- 
mary and lavender, is hushed into silence so profound 
that it is scarcely broken by the song of a bird — shrill 
and clear in harmony with the landscape — and the 
noise of countless empty snail-shells which, covering 
the path, crush and snap under our tread. 

Ganteaume and Mise Jano are in front. Norette 
and I walk silently side by side, hand clasped in hand. 
Sometimes, turning, dazzled by the light, we see be- 
tween the straight trunks of the pine-trees beyond 
the scorched mountain-sides the blue waves of the 
sea. 

“ Here we are ; let us have lunch first !” cries No- 
rette. 

Gauteaume unpacks the provisions, we spread them 
on the grass; and for a few seconds an appetite fairly 
earned during the rough though picturesque ascent 
makes us forget our love-perplexities. 

“Now, while I pick my flowers, void will be free to 
gaze at the landscape.” 

And Norette,ever charming and mischievous, bursts 
into a merry laugh. 

I raise my head, but the landscape has disappeared. 
... A provoking fog, which, at this season creeps up 
the mountain slopes, has slyly enveloped us. A beau- 
tiful fog, it is true, a genuine Provencal one, white. 


122 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


clear, light as gauze, and shimmering with sunbeams. 
Coming upon us in little eager clouds, it none the 
less hides the view, and below, close at hand, the wind 
bears to us the crowing of the cocks in the farm-yards, 
the continuous beating of the waves. 

It is pleasant to know that we are alone. 

In fact, the fog gradually increasing, we are merged 
in a luminous atmosphere of mother-of-pearl and 
opal, in which Norelte grows taller, as though trans- 
iigured, and against whose background, two paces 
distant, a few grass-stalks and the silhouette of a fig- 
tree, rooted on the edge of the precipice, stand forth 
with singular distinctness. 

Suddenly Horette kneels near the fig-tree, and, 
bending forward, calls me. I arrived in time to lift 
her for an instant, laughing and trembling, in my 
arms. 

“ Oh, Ganteaume ; how frightened I was !” 

Happy because she had been rescued by me, still 
startled by the slight peril, and not knowing how to 
express this complex emotion, she bravely, eagerly, 
listening only to the dictates of her heart, embraces — 
Master Ganteaume. 

And the ki§s, while pleasing Norette, made two 
other people happy : Ganteaume, who had received 
it, and I, who knew it had been indirectly meant for 


XXXI 


SAINT SARAH 

“ Well,” continued Norette, u that’s nothing, since 
I have my bouquet. Come, Ganteaume, give me the 
ribbon, the candle, the square of red cloth. And now 
we mustn’t lose another minute if we want to go 
through the Saracen’s Pass. Ganteaume, call Mise 
Jano. Luckily the fog doesn’t extend very low down, 
and I know the right path.” 

In fact, the fog was only a narrow, straight line 
intersecting the mountain. A few steps carried us 
across it, and while its light mists were still sur- 
rounding Mise Jano and Ganteaume, Norette and I 
were already in the light and sunshine. 

What is this Saracen’s Pass to which Norette is 
leading me ? For Xorette, I perceive, is beginning to 
lead me according to her will, and my friends, who 
have known my independence, would be amused to 
see me, in honor of the Golden Goat, obedient to the 
caprices of a little peasant maid. But during the last 
four days, since the episode of the bouquet, have I 
thought solely of this Golden Goat ? 

Xorette deigns to explain that the Saracen’s Pass 
is a narrow ravine, closing from the side of the sea 


124 


TIIE GOLDEN GOAT 


the most important of the three valleys leading to 
Puget-Maure. It was formerly the scene of many a 
battle, and the remains of barricades can still be seen 
projecting from the rocks. 

“ Perhaps this will interest yon, Sir Scholar.” 

But there is nothing specially archaeological about 
our excursion in Horette’s plan. The Saracen’s Pass 
opens almost on level ground half a kilometre from 
the road leading to Frejus. The place, though wild 
and lonely, is accessible by carts, and the gypsies, with 
their caravans on wheels, are glad to turn aside there 
for a halt when, at the change of season, they are on 
their way to winter-quarters. 

The gypsies have come and are expecting Norette, 
who has notified them and has a most important com- 
mission. As they are going to Our-Lady-of-the-Sea, 
Norette will give them the bouquet tied with ribbon 
and the candle to place on the tomb of Saint Sarah. 

“ Saint Sarah ?” 

“ Have you never heard of Saint Sarah, the faithful 
servant of the three* Marys, who, having come with 
them to Provence, after the death of Christ, fin a boat 
which had neither sails nor oars, died near Mary Jacob 
and Mary Salome, at the island of Camargue, between 
the two Rhones, while Mary Magdalen was weeping 
in the desert? 

“ From Aygues-Mortes to Fos, along the gulf around 
the great ponds, there is not a sailor, not a fisherman, 
not a herdsman, not a driver of mares, who does not 
know the legend. Ever since that time Mary Jacob 
<md Mary Salome have occupied an serial chapel in 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


125 


the superb church Provence has erected to them, 
whence can be seen — my father took me there when 
I was a little girl — endless shores and the sea. 

“Saint Sarah, disdained, contents herself with an 
humble crypt where the gypsies alone — or almost 
alone — pay her reverence, because, they say, she was 
of their race and color.” 

We approached the encampment, now almost de- 
serted, the men and all the boys over ten years old 
having gone on an expedition early in the morning. 
Only one old woman had been left to boil the water 
in the pot, look after the horse, and watch half a 
dozen babies, as black as coal, who were rolling naked 
in the grass. 

Mademoiselle Norette’s business, however, is with 
the old woman. 

She has given her the bit of scarlet stuff, and in- 
stantly — for where will not coquetry find a nest ? — the 
crone has pinned it upon the waist of her dress. Then 
they sit down and talk, glancing towards me, while the 
youngest and most curly-lieaded of the little urchins, 
lying on its back, suckles Mise Jano, clinging to her 
golden hair, and the others attack the fragments of 
provisions left in Ganteaume’s basket. Afterwards 
all of them, even the nursling, come and beg a few 
pinches of tobacco to cram into their pipes, already 
colored, and to roll into cigarettes. 

The old woman has told us : 

“ Be not afraid ; ere a week has passed the candle 
will burn upon the tomb near the flowers whose seeds 
came from the East, and, to win her favor for you, 1 


126 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


shall have spoken in an unknown tongue the words 
Saint Sarah loves to hear.” 

Then addressing me, she adds: “All good-fortune 
is your due.” 

Turning to JSTorette she continues, with a gentleness 
of tone and touches of flattery somewhat surprising 
from the lips of a traditional sorceress : 

“The young lady of Puget-Maure is so noble, so 
beautiful! Beautiful and brown as Sarah, noble as 
the princess whose flowers she has brought me. If 
she desired, we would make her queen — but she does 
not, her fate is elsewhere — we would make her queen 
in the Village of the Saints, according to our custom, 
within the circle of our wagons, on a throne in the 
open air, adorned with gold and diamonds. And the 
people would admire her, and, seeing her thus, the 
guardians of Camargue, drawing the bridles of their 
white steeds, would long and turn pale. . . .” 

The old crone showed no disposition to stop. 

“ Let us go,” says Norette, pretending to laugh, but 
evidently embarrassed in my presence by this flood of 
enigmatical words. 

The sun had disappeared. We must hasten to 
reach Puget-Maure before nightfall. 

Meanwhile Norette, visibly excited, was telling 
me that her name was Sarah, like her mother’s, and 
Saint Sarah was their patron saint. She felt happier 
now, secure of Saint Sarah’s favor in behalf of some- 
thing she did not utter in words, but which her eyes, 
though averted each time they met mine, enabled me 
to divine. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


127 


But for Ganteaume’s presence perhaps Norette 
might have said more. 

Spite of the impatience of Monsieur Honnorat, 
whose appetite had not waited, and Saladine’s angry 
rebellion, she insisted upon showing me, before din- 
ner, a somewhat shapeless bit of wood which I had 
not previously noticed in her museum of mementos. 

“ See ! here is Saint Sarah, the patroness of the 
Gazans. We have had her in the family more than 
three hundred years. Revere her, at least. She is 
not beautiful, but I love her.” 

It was one of those antique images whose gilding, 
becoming oxidized, assumes shades of ebony, and which 
the popular imagination readily transforms into the 
black Holy Virgins long buried, but whose place of 
concealment is some day miraculously indicated by 
;t he lowing and kneeling of the toiling oxen while 
clearing a thicket. 

Only Saint Sarah, with her Oriental protile — very 
characteristic, spite of the rude carving — with the 
slight traces of gold remaining in the folds of the long 
mantle and the twisted fringes of the head-dress, had 
a somewhat Pagan air, which Holy Virgins usually do 
not possess, and looked like a Sultana who might have 
resembled Norette. 



It would be prudent to go, and Skipper Ruf was 
right. Every night, unable to sleep, I have agreed 
with him. 

Things are moving too rapidly to suit me. Norette 
is too dangerously frank. The declivity of our love- 
affair, should my imagination lag, is likely to end in 
marriage. 

This is where the Golden Goat would lead me. 

Yet, by a strange contradiction, having taken it 




THE GOLDEN GOAT 


129 


into my head to make Norette love me on account of 
the Golden Goat, since she has done so I have for- 
gotten the Golden Goat and think only of Norette. 

Overlooking the sentimental business of the bou- 
quets, overlooking Saint Sarah and the gypsy be- 
trothal, something more serious happened yesterday. 

The moonlight was magnificent, and we lingered in 
the garden late into the evening. Horette and I 
were sitting on the stone bench. Monsieur Honnorat, 
with his back turned to us, was smoking his pipe and 
thinking, with both elbows resting on the top of the 
little wall. 

We were talking in low tones on indifferent sub- 
jects, as lovers talk, divining emotion beneath the flood 
of idle words. 

Horette’s teeth glittered. I was thinking with 
vague jealousy — love consists of such follies — of the 
childish kiss whose sweetness Ganteaume knew. 

I ought to have distrusted myself. But I felt per- 
fectly safe, since Monsieur Honnorat was there and 
the moon was guarding us. 

Suddenly Monsieur Honnorat cried in his loud, 
good-natured voice : 

“See! The moon is passing behind Eagle Peak; 
we shall lose it for five minutes.” 

The whole garden was shrouded in darkness as 
though a curtain had fallen. We ceased talking; 
Norette’s hand sought mine. 

When, gradually unmasked, the full moon again ap- 
peared, I had no longer cause to be jealous of Gan- 
teaume. 


130 THE GOLDEN GOAT 



Yes ! It would be wise to go. 

But everything seems to conspire against me : the 
moon, after the fog, and the mistral, after the moon. 

This morning, as I w T as preparing — having firmly 
resolved upon my departure — to cross the square to 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


131 


settle my bill at The Seafaring Bacchus, I ran against 
Saladine, who was hurriedly bolting the* door of the 
Donkey’s Passage, which usually stood wide open. 

“ Going out ? Holy Mary, what are you thinking 
of?” she screamed, raising her eyes to heaven and 
wringing her wrinkled hands. “ Why, the Almighty 
Father Himself would stay at home in such weather. 
Listen to that music. It is raining tiles, the trees are 
breaking, the water of the fountains is flying away in 
spray, and just now — wishing to go to a neighbor’s 
close by at the street corner — I had to cling to the wall 
to save myself from being swept away, and was pelted 
in the face, as though they were sand, with handfuls 
of pebbles as big as the sugar- pi urns at a christening.” 

“ Is this the mistral ?” 

“ This is the mistral.” 

“ Does it last long ?” 

“ Never less than three days, sometimes six, most 
frequently nine,” answered Saladine. 


/ 






XXXIII 

THE MISTRAL 

Norette wanted to go out, 
too. But, just at the moment 
when she hesitatingly stepped 
on the first flags of the square, 
a squall, sudden, sharp, and 
chill, met her. 

“ Monsieur ! Saladine! Help 
me.” 

She was laughing, with eyes 
half closed, shaded by their long 
brown lashes ; her dress was 
twisted about her by the wind, 
displaying her graceful ankles, 
's'* and suddenly all my wise reso- 

lutions flew away like the spray from the fountains 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


133 


and the stone sugar-plums that pelted worthy Sala- 
dine. 

“ Let us go to the third story, and there, safely shel- 
tered, watch the mistral blow.” 

“ Shall we hear it, too ?” 

“ Have no fears on that score. It will take good 
care to make itself heard, even without being entreated 
to do so.” 

The sky was blue, the hard, uniform blue of a gem, 
but no birds flew across it, and before the town-hall 
the ancient poplar of ’48, shaking its shining leaves, 
bowed down to the very ground before his majesty, 
the mistral. 

At times the wind died away and the poplar stood 
motionless. Then, after an interval of deep silence, 
far away in the distance came a low roar like the surf, 
rising and swelling and rushing upon us like the as- 
sault of viewless billows breaking, as though against a 
cliff, upon the little tower on its rock. 

“All night long I could not sleep,” said Norette ; “ I 
was thinking of the poor j)eople at sea.” 

This suggestion, the bare thought of Skipper Kuf 
alone in his boat in such weather, brought Ganteaume 
to the verge of tears. 

Twice, after the third and sixth day, this obstinate 
mistral renewed the attack, and, for nine days, prison- 
ers of the wind, guarded by the tempest, Norette and 
I enjoyed the pleasures of a perpetual tete-a-tete, all 
the more delightful because we had not planned it. 

Thanks to the mistral, all the customs of the house- 
hold were upset. 


t 


lo4 


THE GOEt)EN GOAT 


Nothing .was seen of Saladine, who, unnerved and 
unable to keep quiet anywhere, ran all day long from 
kitchen to garret, like an old cat excited by the wind, 
and made her appearance only at meals. 

Spite of the season and the bright sunbeams stream- 
ing through the windows, the atmosphere was chilly 
— a provoking, paradoxical chilliness that irritated the 
nerves. Monsieur Ilonnorat, silent and querulous, 
sat from morning till night before a big fire of vine- 
cuttings, busily nursing some indescribable imaginary 
malaria contracted in Senegal and brought back by 
the mistral ; personally affronted because the accursed 
wind seemed bent on pursuing him into his own 
house, finding its way in through the chimney, blow- 
ing the ashes into the room, and beating the bright 
flames down upon the crossbar of the andirons. 

Ganteaume, profiting by the general confusion, 
starts at a certain hour and disappears for the whole 
afternoon. He goes, as I made him confess, his pockets 
filled with stones to keep the wind from blowing him 
away, to visit his friend Peu-Parle on the mountain. 

Happy Ganteaume ! He is always thinking of the 
Golden Goat, and it comforts him a little for the loss 
of Norette. 

For me, I am thinking only of Norette. I am ready 
to remain thus, far from everything in the world, 
with no regrets so long as it pleases the goblins of the 
air to make an uproar round our enchanted tower. 

Sometimes, when the gale redoubles its fury, Norette 
and I, sitting side by side, feel as though everything 
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136 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


and shake, and we possess the illusion of being alone, 
calm and undismayed, amid the surges, in a shipwreck 
free from peril. 

Almost every day at about one o’clock there is a 
lull. 

Then we take refuge on my terrace. I know a 
corner where the tempest cannot reach. The sun 
shines warmly, but all nature is still quivering, and 
whirlwinds of white dust chase one another along the 
lonely roads". 

The mistral soon returns, however, in all its fury. 
How is the terrace to be crossed ? Norette, pretend- 
ing to be afraid, clings mirthfully to my arm. 

One morning the mistral no longer blew. 

The sea was azure in the distance,' and the foliage 
of the trees was motionless. 

The glad voices of women and children floated up- 
ward from the street, and high above, near the roofs, 
against the wind-swept sky, flocks of martens, darting 
through the sunshine in frantic circles, uttered stri- 
dent cries that sounded like the swish of the sickle 
cutting ripe wheat. 

“ Released at last ?” 

“ Alas, yes, Mademoiselle Norette ; but I would fain 
have my imprisonment last forever.” 

The nine days’ dream was over ; reality was about 
to claim me. 

Robinson Crusoe was startled to find a footprint 
on the sand of what he believed to be a desert island ; 
I experienced that very day an equally disagreeable 
sensation ; for having gone out to take a walk, the 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


137 


first person I met was Galfar, newly clad from top to 
toe, liis beard trimmed as Skipper Ruf had described, 
but still followed by his dog and with his everlasting 
gun on his shoulder. 

I must state, however, that when I bowed to him 
Monsieur Galfar deigned to return my salute. 



XXXIV 


CARDS ON THE TABLE 

The day had another surprise in store. 

I had scarcely passed through the ancient gate-way 
of the village when I heard some one running after 
me. It was Ganteaume, panting for breath and very 
eager. 

u A gentleman is waiting for you at the tavern — 
an old gentleman who wears spectacles. He wants 
to speak to yon ; I think it’s about the Golden Goat.” 

“ You have been troubling your head a little too 
much about the Golden Goat, friend Ganteaume. 
Besides, what should prevent the gentleman with 
spectacles from coming to my lodgings to see me ?” 

“I said so to him, but he prefers . . .” 

“Very well ; go on, I’ll follow you.” 

The personage who awaited me was no other than 
the worthy Monsieur Blaise Pascal, citizen of Monte 
Carlo, and sworn professor of trente et quaranie and 
roulette . 

The old fool talked to me in the most sensible way. 

“ Let us play with our cards on the table. I might 
bear you a grudge, being convinced that, but for my 
proposal six months ago, and the imprudent words 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


139 


that escaped Galfar while intoxicated, you would 
never, alone, have found the track of the Golden Goat. 
You say no. So much the better. I was reluctant 
to believe you capable of an unhandsome act. Let us 
admit that chance alone led you here — it is possi- 
ble; I believe in chance — and that a series of other 
chances, interpreted by reflection, has finally made 
you acquainted with a portion of our secret. 

“But it is none the less true that Galfar, with some 
semblance of logic, accuses you of having stolen the 
secret from him. It is none the less true that Galfar, 
who also wished to wed her, will strain every nerve to 
prevent the marriage of which you are dreaming 
with his cousin Norette. 

“Yet, in regard to this last point, I will undertake, 
on certain conditions, to make Galfar listen to reason. 

“ Why not go into partnership with us? What you 
know, we know, too : the shadow marking the spot 
where the casket is buried ; the papers or parchments 
contained in this casket revealing in their turn the 
entrance, concealed by a moving stone, to the caves 
where the treasure lies. What you lack, we lack, too : 
it is — you see I am playing, as I promised, with the 
cards face up on the table — it is a silver bell, resem- 
bling a talisman, which you held in your hand an in- 
stant (don’t deny it; Ganteaume told Peu-Parle and 
Peu-Parle repeated the story to me), and instantly 
gave up because you were then ignorant of its value, 
for you did not even think for an instant of copying 
the curious inscription it bears. Come, now, to prove 
my good faith, I’ll tell you that this inscription is 


140 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


simply Greek written reversed in Arabic characters, 
or Arabic written in Greek, according to the simple 
methods of old cryptographs. To decipher it would 
be a trifle. But, in order to decipher it, it must be 
in our possession, and the sole way of obtaining it is 
by becoming the husband of Mademoiselle Horette. 

“Now, if you wish to know why such a treasure has 
remained inviolate so long, and why — their wives 
holding the secret — the Galfars and the Gazans, rather 
than touch it, have let their battlements and towers 
crumble into decay, I will reply that there is a mys- 
terious reason, and if I knew it perhaps I might not 
need your assistance. 

“ If you wish to know, also, how I have learned all 
these things, I will tell you that Galfar confided them 
to me one morning when I was returning from Africa, 
and he, with bare feet, was washing the deck of the 
steamer. 

“ He had it from family traditions. ‘ To think,’ he 
exclaimed, pointing with his wet mop to a village on 
the coast, shining white on the summit of a cliff, the 
very village where we are — ‘ to think that I am here 
scrubbing planks, with my legs in the water, when up 
there, with a little money and a little help, I might be 
master of a countless treasure in a fortnight.’ 

“ I listened to Galfar ; I am a practical man. I found 
the money for him, and put him in a position to pay 
court to Norette, but he did not succeed. What 
would one expect from a plain sailor? Then I thought 
of taking you into the plan. Hot being a practical 
man, you committed the mistake of refusing. Accept 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


141 


now, and no time will have been lost. As enemies Ave 
shall injure each other; as friends, success is certain. 
We will divide the riches into thirds; you marry 
Norette, and I’ll give my daughter — for I have a 
fair-haired daughter, with a talent for music — to Gal- 
far.” 

This devil of a fellow, with his eloquence, almost 
succeeded in tempting me. 

While he was speaking I fancied I saw the shadow 
cast by the rock, the hole, the casket ; then, behind 
^ the turning stone, the narrow cavern of the legends, 
peopled with numberless bats, whose silent flight 
seemed like the movement of phantoms; and doors, 
doors, doors, bristling with nails, garlanded — oh, mar- 
vels of wrought-iron ! — with defensive ornaments of 
Arabic design. Above all, I fancied I saw the last 
retreat, the cavern with no opening beyond, crammed, 
as Peu- Parle described it to Ganteaume, with dia- 
monds and “ bars of gold.” 

What a beautiful dream to realize ! What a renew- 
al of broad, free life ! For, after all, this pretended 
civilization, so refined yet so mercenary, fetters the 
hands, clogs the limbs while enlarging the brain, and 
by rude indigence prisons our poor bodies in a corner, 
while the spirit, bound to the flesh, suffers from being 
unable to take its flight and realize the divine on 
earth. 

Unfortunately, just at the moment I was allowing 
myself to be thus borne away on the wings of the 
chimera, Monsieur Blaise had the vexatious inspira- 
tion to spread on the table before me — taking them, 
10 


142 


T1IE GOLDEN GOAT 


too, out of an abominably dirty portfolio — three 
stamped papers, our contracts, drawn up in advance 
and requiring nothing but the signatures. 

I was ashamed for the Golden Goat, humiliated for 
Norette, to see them thus made the objects of a bar- 
gain. 

“ Enough, Monsieur Blaise,” I replied ; “ whether 
the matter in question concerns the King of Majorca’s 
treasures or the love of Mademoiselle Korette, or both 
together, I value them sufficiently to desire to. obtain 
them for myself alone.” 

“ So you refuse 2” 

“ I refuse.” 

“ Then it is war.” 

“ War let it be !” 

“I’ve done what I could ; I wash my hands of it,” 
Monsieur Blaise concluded, gazing at me with the 
sorrowful, pitying expression we cannot help assum- 
ing when we look at lunatics. 


XXXV 


WAR IS DECLARED 

It really is war ! 

In a few days, by making skilful use of Gan- 
teaume’s imprudences and Peu-Parle’s senseless chat- 
ter, Galfar and the estimable Monsieur Blaise have 
managed to set all Puget-Maure against me. 

They had no difficult task with this population of 
free, proud peasants, ready to dream of treasures dur- 
ing the leisure hours secured by a life of Oriental 
semi-indolence ; all of them, too, more or less engaged 
in powder- making or poaching, and with whom, in 
sudden fits of passion, a mere nothing awakens the 
blood of the old pirates. 

They were accustomed to live in poverty under 


144 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


their olive-trees and among their ravines, consoling 
themselves, like Pen -Parle, with the idea that, after 
all, they might call themselves rich. 

The illusion gilded their poverty and made them 
look down upon the inhabitants of other villages. 

Each one dimly, vaguely, hoped that some day, 
while clearing an arid table-land covered with tufts of 
blossoming lavender, two or three lucky strokes of a 
pick-axe might reveal the entrance of the fairy cavern. 
Which of them did not remember, while upon the 
watch, having heard the bleating of the Goat and the 
tinkle of its clear bell ? 

Let the Goat continue, as of yore, to sleep on a lit- 
ter of gold in the depths of its unknown retreat, and 
let the King of Majorca’s sequins and ingots remain 
under the earth forever; they are content; they admit 
it, without desiring anything more. 

But that I, a stranger, should come to steal them 
all, and seize the traditional heritage of Puget-Maure, 
instantly creates a scandal, kindles hatred, and un- 
chains covetousness. 

I am watched, suspected. 

In the streets I see at every turn hostile looks and 
gestures. Women point at me as they whisper to- 
gether. The children do not yet insult me, but al- 
ready forget to greet me. 

In the fields there is not a corner of the wall, not a 
tree-trunk, not a clump of cactus, whence I do not im- 
agine that sullen, threatening eyes are watching me 
when I go out to walk, and I no longer carry my gun 
solely as a pretext. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


145 


Even the cure, worthy Abbe Sebe, from love of 
peace, holds aloof. 

Peu-Parle alone does not fear to remain my friend. 

Ganteaume, spite of my cautions to be prudent, 
goes to see him every day in his wilderness, and, talk- 
ing with him about the Golden Goat, grows excited 
over the old man’s oracular visionary maunderings. 

But yesterday Ganteaume, caught by the storm that 
has burst upon me, came home terribly bruised after a 
battle with pebble-stones, bravely sustained against an 
ambuscade of the village boys. 

Mademoiselle Eorette bandaged his wounds. 

I have grown sad in recalling Galfar’s words : 
“ There is blood, there are scarlet drops mingled with 
the traces of gold the Goat leaves on the rocks.” 

Ganteaume, his wounds bandaged by Norette, was 
radiant with happiness. 


XXXVI 


THE TWO DEAD MEN 

I accused the cure wrongfully. But this visit will 
not produce the effect the worthy man hopes* for he 
wanted to induce me to renounce the treasure, and 
has succeeded only in making me more certain of its 
existence. 

I was in my room, in the act of rummaging among 
my papers, when, approaching the window, I saw 
Abbe Sebe emerge from the little door of the par- 
sonage, glance cautiously around as though afraid of 
being watched, then look towards the tower and bend 
his steps in my direction. 

During the half hour before the close of day the 
streets and alleys are deserted. Shut up in their 
houses, above whose roofs the smoke is rising, the 
women are preparing supper, while the men have not 
yet returned from the fields. Abbe Sebe could pay 
me a visit without meeting any one. 

In a few minutes some one knocks. It is the abbe, 
evidently excited and confused. He is breathless, 
panting after coming up two flights of stairs — a man 
who could climb the steepest hills without losing 
breath— and his hat, clutched in both hands, assumed 
extraordinary shapes. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


147 


To put him at ease I offered him a glass of myrtle 
brandy. He sits down and we drink together; only 
then does he venture to speak. 

“See,” he cried, “through Ganteaume’s fault two 

men who like and respect each other are prevented 

from meeting.” 

© 

This beginning amazed me. 

“ Why shouldn’t we meet, my dear abbe ; and, be- 
sides, what can the ingenuous Ganteautne have to do 
with the matter ?” 

“ Ganteaume ! So you are ignorant of his last ex- 
ploit. You don’t know that, having become old Peu- 
Parle’s disciple, and sharing all his follies, he tried 
day before yesterday to summon the devil at mid- 
night in a spot where four roads meet. Don’t deny 
it. I surprised him, conjuring book in hand, stand- 
ing in the centre of a ring between three candles. I 
was returning, my clerk lighting the way with a lan- 
tern, from the mass of Truphemus, whither I had 
gone to carry the host. Ganteaume was shouting, 
gesticulating — ” 

“ And the devil did not come ?” 

“Ho; but at the bare sight of my shadow, the 
mere glimpse of the lantern, Ganteaume, seized with 
frantic terror, left his candles there and ran to the vil- 
lage. I ordered the little clerk to say nothing about 
the matter. Unluckily he tattled. So, thanks to Gan- 
teaume, after being compromised already as a treasure- 
seeker, you are in a fair way to pass for a sorcerer. 
At the bakehouse, the washing-place, the fountain, 
wherever two gossips meet, nothing is talked of ex- 


148 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


cept you. And I’m brought in, too, alas ! for, having 
attempted to defend you, people already suspect me 
of being in the dark conspiracy you have plotted 
against the Golden Goat.” 

The abbe laughed, then suddenly growing grave, 
added : 

“ Listen ; by virtue of my office, of my cassock, I 
am responsible for the peace of the village, and the 
state of affairs here during the last few days has af- 
fected me very painfully. 

“ I am not accusing you, but myself ; I ought to have 
kept silence on the subject of the inscription at the 
hermitage ; I ought to have concealed the Gazans’ 
memoirs from you. But, since the mischief is done, 
it will be better for you to know all. 

“ I will not say for your own sake, but for the sake 
of Monsieur Honnorat, of Mademoiselle Norette, go, 
give up the Golden Goat. You can return later, in 
six months or a year, when prejudices have disap- 
peared and wrath is appeased. 

“You have a right to risk your own peace for hopes 
which may prove chimerical, but not that of others. 
Now Galfar is capable of everything, and a crime will 
not stand in his way.” 

I wanted to interrupt the abbe. But he had taken 
the book from among my papers, and went on : 

“ If you only knew! The Golden Goat has always 
brought misfortune on the Gazan family ; that is why 
they never speak of it and no one mentions it to 
them. You must have noticed that many pages in 
this volume are missing. I, myself, at the entreaty of 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


149 


the dying Madame Hon norat, tore out and burned 
them all to destroy the last traces of a tragedy now 
almost forgotten, but whose sanguinary memory long 
rose like a wall of hate between the Galfars and the 
Gazans. All the pages? No. Before confiding the 
book to me Madame Honnorat, with trembling hands, 
aided by Norette, then a girl twelve years old, tore 
out one, which she kept. Did it, perhaps, contain the 
secret of the treasure? Does Mademoiselle Norette 
still possess it ? That matters little. These are family 
secrets which it is not my place to penetrate. 

“But in view of the adventure in which you seem 
to wish to engage, it is my duty to tell you — as an 
example — the story as it was related in the pages I 
destroyed. 

“ About the year 1500 two cousins, one a Gazan, the 
other a Galfar, were rivals for the hand of a cousin. 
Not that they loved her! True, she was a splendid 
beauty ; but both were poor, having ruined them- 
selves, the older in playing his pranks at sea, the 
younger — on the pretext of studying medicine — in 
the gambling-houses of Avignon, so it was the secret 
of the treasure that they specially desired to win from 
her. 

“Neither would yield. They quarrelled, and the 
younger struck the older one. 

“ Then, unseen, they went one evening, like Cain 
and Abel, to the mountains near the chapel which, even 
at that time, a hermit had in charge. 

“ In the middle of the night this hermit thought he 
dreamed that some one was knocking loudly at his 


150 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


door, and on awakening lie heard a cry : ‘ Help ! I have 
killed my brother.’ Then, going out, he saw by the 
starlight, stretched on the grass in the cemetery, a 
young man whose head was supported by a gentle- 
man, somewhat older but remai^ably like him. 

“As the youth was dying the hermit confessed 
him. When he was dead the other, who stood leaning 
against the wall, said : ‘ Father, it is high time that 
you should confess me, too.’ Then the hermit, turn- 
ing, saw on his blood-stained doublet the hilt of a long 
poniard which he had buried in his breast. When he 
had made his confession, the wounded man drew out 
the blade and lay down on the turf beside the other, 
whose hair and eyes he kissed amid his tears. 

“In the morning, when it was time to bury them, 
they were found clasped in so close an embrace that 
it would have been necessary to break their arms to 
separate the bodies. They were laid together, with- 
out a coffin, in the same grave, and a mass was insti- 
tuted for the souls of the two dead men. 

“I shall celebrate the mass day after to-morrow, 
the anniversary,” the abbe concluded. 

“ Ganteaume and I will attend devoutly, that the 
people may cease to believe us to be sorcerers.” 

“ Then you are not going away?” 

“ No, indeed ! Not even after this touching tale.” 

“ As you please. But it is not wise to tempt God.” 



XXXYII 

SALADINE AND THE PIEDMONTESE 

The abbe seems very tragic. 

Yet the excitement in the village is uncomforta- 
ble, and Galfar’s ways are beginning to occupy my 
thoughts. 

If only Norette continues to believe me sincerely 
in love with her and is not aware of my flirtations 
with the Golden Goat ! But the abbe relieves my 
mind on that score. No one will speak of the Gold- 
en Goat in Norette’s presence. Besides, even in case 
of any indiscretion, the natural manner of our meet- 
ing, my indifference when I found the bell, my way 


152 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


of restoring it, the silence I have maintained since, 
would sufficiently attest my innocence. 

Galfar, after an absence of several days, has just re- 
turned, bringing in his train a trio of perfect brig- 
ands — the men, no doubt, with whom Skipper Kuf 
had surprised him in conference at the tavern of The 
Antico Limon Yerde. 

Having, perhaps, decided to search for the treasure 
on the insufficient data he possesses in common with 
Monsieur x Blaise, does he intend to employ them in 
digging? In that case he would not be wrong, for 
these Piedmontese, with their hangdog faces, are stur- 
dy and capable laborers when the point in question is 
to excavate the earth or make acquaintance with the 
rocks. 

Or does he intend — and judging solely by their 
faces he has made no bad selection in that case also 
— to use them for some dark enterprise ? Meanwhile, 
their sole occupation is to hold endless conferences at 
The Seafaring Bacchus, Galfar presiding, to play mor- 
ra from morning till night, shouting “ tre ! cinque /” 
holding their fingers spread wide open before their 
faces and making the knives — put on the tables ac- 
cording to custom beside each player — dance with 
the heavy blows of their fists. 

Galfar has also brought with him a donkey — named, 
like its predecessor, Saladin, for the purpose of affront- 
ing Saladine — which, with the three Piedmontese, lie 
keeps in his stable at the end of the passage. A nice 
little brown donkey, quite ignorant, I am certain, of 
the double part Galfar is making him play. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


153 


For Galfar has brought suit against luckless Mon- 
sieur Honnorat to compel the repair of the Donkey’s 
Passage, on the pretext that the pavement is uneven, 
and Saladin’s hoofs are tender; then, the lawsuit 
gained, off goes Saladin, with the panniers of esparto 
grass across his pack-saddle, to seek for sand and 
rounded pebbles in the bed of the torrent. 

At present Saladin goes and comes philosophically 
by the steep path under the narrow gate-way of the 
village to hasten the repairs supposed to be in his 
honor, but with which he could have easily dispensed, 
and the paviors do the paving at their ease, without 



154 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


hurrying themselves — like people who, on the con- 
trary, are anxious to make the job last. 

Our dwelling, once so peaceful, has become unin- 
habitable. 

Disturbed in his pleasant Moslem repose, irritated 
every time he goes in or comes out by having to climb 
over the barricades, Monsieur Honnorat shuts him- 
self up in his own room and smokes desperately, hid- 
ing his apoplectic fury in a cloud of tobacco. 

Saladine, ironically pursued by the tormenting “gee, 
Saladin !” makes her appearance as rarely as possible. 

But Norette, haughty and contemptuous, after hav- 
ing defended her cause with a lawyer’s coolness be- 
fore the justice of the peace, watches and directs the 
paviors. 

“ Whoever pays has a right to the work,” she says, 
without troubling herself about the lofty airs of Gal- 
far, who, moreover, becomes singularly timid in her 
presence. When any domestic matters claim her at- 
tention she gives up her place to Ganteaume, who, 
proud of his office, stations himself on a pile of sand 
in an attitude which combines prudence with dignity. 

I am uneasy, though feigning indifference. To say 
nothing of Galfar, I don’t like to have those three bul- 
lies quartered in the house where Norette sleeps. 


XXXVIII 


A DOUBLE SHOT 

It is evident that I make Galfar uncomfortable. 

The worthy powder-manufacturer has found a way 
of showing it that is certainly unusual. 

I had gone out hunting early in the morning, part- 
ly from idleness, partly from bravado, to prove to 
myself that the secret threats of the Puget conspira- 
tors did not alarm me, and also with the intention of 
escaping the complaints with which Monsieur Hon- 
norat overwhelmed me. 

With my gun slung by a strap, and no thought of 
harming the smallest game, I followed the edge of 
the rocky valley which bends around the table-land 
whence rises the Goat’s Rock. 

The partridges were calling on the other side, but 
Abbe Sebe not being present I was little interested 
in them. My thoughts at that moment, I don’t know 
why, were with Norette. 

The barking of a dog, which had a familiar sound, 
roused me from my reverie. 

Galfar was following the opposite edge. 

We were separated only by the width of the val- 
ley. Galfar was evidently watching me. I began to 







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THE GOLDEN GOAT 


157 


watch him, too. He was hunting after a strange 
fashion. 

Twice, admirably started by his dog, the partridges 
— a splendid covey of red partridges — rose within 
easy range of his gun ; twice he did not fire at them. 

Though but a tolerable shot, and no enthusiastic 
sportsman, I was furious. 

But Galfar must have had a plan of his own. 

At the third flight the covey turned, and, being 
headed off, crossed the valley, according to tactics 
known elsewhere. 

One would have said that Galfar had been waiting 
for this very thing. 

I saw him leap into the brambles, vanish, cross the 
valley, climb the other side, and appear again about 
fifty paces in front of me, keeping his dog close. 

And off they go behind the partridges, as though 
to drive them towards me. 

The dog sets out in search of the birds and they 
fly up in front of me like a curtain, out of a level 
stretch of dry grass. Galfar brings his gun to his 
shoulder. . . . For an instant I trembled, believing he 
was going to fire upon me, the direction was so nearly 
the same. He aims, fires : crack, crack ! I hear some- 
thing whiz past my ears. Two partridges fall at my 
feet. 

Galfar approaches and bows to me. Galfar becomes 
very gentlemanly when he wears new clothes. 

“A fine double shot,” I remark. 

“ Pooh ! Ho great merit when a man makes his 

own powder,” 
li 


158 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 



Then he picks up the brace of partridges. 

“Would you carry them to my uncle Honnorat? 
No offence, since we shall soon be relatives. Perhaps 
it will console him for all the bad blood engendered 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


159 


since I took it into my head to repair the Donkey’s 
Passage.” 

Then, blowing the feathers apart, Galfar adds : 

“ See ; not harmed a bit, only one hole ! Here, to 
save lead, we shoot partridges with a bullet.” 

I congratulated Galfar and took the partridges, not 
wishing to be inferior to him in courtesy. 

His eyes questioned me, the eyes of a southern 
blond, a hard, stony blue, a bit of the Mediterranean 
frozen. 

I believe Galfar hoped to frighten me. 


XXXIX 


THE STONE 

Without being what is called alarmed, I am begin- 
ning to fear that my adventure may end tragically; I 
feel it in the air around me, like the dangers and 
threats of which Galfar’s double shot might have been 
the significant omen. This state of war does not dis- 
please me. A touch of romance may spring from it 
to relieve the somewhat monotonous round of my life 
in Puget. ' 

Xorette seems more excited. She is aware of the 
hate her cousin has sworn against me, and the sarcastic 
homage of the partridges gives her cause for reflection. 
Luckily, she does not know that it is really the Golden 
Goat which stirs strife between us ; she ingenuously, 
presumptuously, attributes the hatred — and I shall 
certainly take care not to undeceive her — to Galfar’s 
jealousy. 

That is why — in order not to further irritate Galfar 
still more — Xorette, trusting and prudent, has charged 
me to keep our plans secret ; the request for her hand 
in marriage, which my conscience demanded, is, ac- 
cording to the new order, postponed. 

“My father is very brave,” says Norette; “his ad- 
ventures have proved that. Brave at sea; but on 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


161 


shore he feels such a need of quiet, such a horror of 
all contention, that, while desiring our happiness, I 
believe he would be capable of refusing you ray hand 
and giving it to Galfar, just for the sake of digesting 
his meals undisturbed and smoking his pipe in peace.” 

Meanwhile our love-affair pursues its course — nay, 
little by little, following a natural bend, from being at 
first innocent it has become relatively wrong. Else- 
where I should have struggled against my inclina- 
tions. But here, where Norette is alone and I am 
alone with Norette, in this daily tete-a-tete under this 
sky, among these perfumes, this silence, this solitude, 
with nature favoring and encouraging, suddenly I be- 
lieved that I loved Norette with my whole heart. 

Let city men condemn me, Bobinson Crusoe would 
forgive. 

Every evening — the extinguishing of her lamp was 
the signal — I went into the garden where Norette 
awaited me, and there, facing the bright horizon, we 
spent delightful hours. Far away in the distance, 
stretching to the sea, the hills rose one behind another 
in vague, tremulous outlines. The stars alone saw us. 

Usually I slipped in through a little gate communi- 
cating with the corridor and the Donkey’s Passage. 

But now that the Donkey’s Passage is occupied at 
night by Galfar’s Piedmontese almost as much as 
during the day, I have been obliged to find another 
way. 

The wall, surmounted by a railing enclosing the 
garden, does not rise very high, and through the al- 
most perpendicular rock, which it crowns, extends a 


162 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


fissure where grow several stunted shrubs, just suited 
to help in scaling the cliff. 

That is the way I climb up, using elbows and knees, 
clinging to the rough places in the limestone rock, the 
bare roots, and the protuberances of the dwarf-oaks. 

At the top there is a huge overhanging rock on 
which I am obliged to climb to reach the w T all. It 
is no easy feat; Horette, bending forward, sometimes 
helps me. 

Ho one can surprise us. Saladine goes to bed with 
the chickens, and Monsieur Honnorat follows her ex- 
ample, not only from hygienic motives, but because 
he prides himself on walking in the streets before 
dawn, to astonish, by his early rising, the peasants on 
their way to the fields. 

Have I been watched? I think so. One-evening, 
some one undoubtedly having loosened it during the 
night, I felt the stone shake and slip away under my 
feet. As it rolled down with a loud noise I clutched 
the railing, and Horette, leaning over the gulf with- 
out a cry, held out her arms to me. 

The matter was discussed at breakfast this morn- 
ing. Horette and I feigned ignorance of it. Sala- 
dine had heard nothing. Monsieur Honnorat had 
heard it, and was going to get up and light his lan- 
tern; but he decided to stay in bed, remembering 
that last year in the same month, after heavy rains, 
another large stone had rolled down in the same way. 

Whatever Monsieur Honnorat may think, the rain 
had nothing to do with it. 

In the first place, it has not been raining. And 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


163 


then, Ganteaume, while inspecting, according to his 
praiseworthy custom, as soon as day dawned, the pave- 
ments of the streets and the dust in the roads, sur- 
prised Galfar, attended by his inseparable Piedmont- 
ese, examining, with an interest too keen not to be 
suspicious, the place where the stone fell. 


XL 


THE MASS 

This very morning Abbe Sebe is to celebrate liis 
annual mass for the souls of “ the two dead men.” 

I shall be present, having promised to go. 

The bell rings and we set out. Monsieur Honno- 
rat and Salad ine walk in front ; I follow, watched 
with curious eyes by the people standing on the 
thresholds of the doors, because I have had the au- 
dacity to offer my arm to Mademoiselle Xorette. 

Ganteaume is absent. For the last few days it has 
been impossible to know where to find the boy. 

The church is low, white, and cold, with no pict- 
ures on the walls, no wainscoting — it is as bare as a 
village mosque. A passage separates two rows of 
benches, and on each side, exchanging fierce glances, 
spite of the sanctity of the place, sit the members of 
the two families and their followers. For, if Galfar 
has his partisans, Monsieur Hon norat has his also. I 
am every one’s foe. The Golden Goat has again 
roused hostility; for the sake of the Golden Goat, 
Monsieur Honnorat’s friends like me no better than 
Galfar’s. 

Galfar, with his father, Christopher Galfar, an old 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


165 


peasant with the refined face of a gentleman, and his 
mother, formerly called madame, now plain Christole, 
a tall, thin woman, proud and rebellious, occupy the 
first bench at the right. 

We, the Gazans and I, sit on the first bench at 
the left; and Galfar, seeing me appear safe and 
sound, bright as a sword-blade, is amazed, and can 
hardly conceal his disappointment. I smiled, re- 
membering the stone; Norette, too, cannot help 
smiling. 

Old Peu-Parle himself has come in full dress, wear- 
ing a three - cornered hat, knee - breeches, and white 
serge coat cut in the style of the Empire. Grave 
and formal, he attends the ceremonial out of courtesy 
and good-breeding. 

Peu-Parle knows the Goat’s secret ; our emotions 
do not interest him. 

After the mass which, newly shaved for the occa- 
sion, he has celebrated with great dignity, the abbe, 
standing before the altar, utters a brief address, ex- 
horting all to cultivate a peaceful disposition and to 
despise the riches of this world. 

His words are touching. Monsieur Honnorat, who 
desires nothing but peace, uses his handkerchief noi- 
sily in the finest passage. Galfar himself seems 
moved. But Mademoiselle Norette does not stir. 
Impassive, obstinate, her calm, straight profile, her __ 
fixed, resolute gaze, remind me of the imperious, 
dainty statuette of Saint Sarah. 

Mademoiselle Norette is right. 

As we leave the church we see Ganteaume com- 


166 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


ing, supporting and petting Mise Jano, as she limps 
painfully along on three legs. 

“ A blow from a Piedmontese knife, hidden in the 
sleeve and flung from a distance,” Ganteaume tells 
ns. “ If only I had been there ! But the wretch had 
gone and Mise Jano lay bleeding on the grass as if 
she were dying.” 

“ You see, Korette, to what jour recklessness, your 
foolish bravado exposes us!”’ cried Monsieur Honno- 
rat, purple with selfish rage, as though he felt the 
cold Piedmontese knife in his own flesh. “ This is 
what comes of letting Mise Jano run about with the 
bell.” 

“ But Mise Jano didn’t wear the bell.” 

“ They must have supposed that she had it.” 

“ Well, even if he should get the bell, do you think 
that Galfar — a fine heir, upon my word, for the King 
of Majorca’s treasures — would find himself any near- 
er his goal ?” retorted Korette, wiping Mise Jano’s 
frightened eyes with her handkerchief. 

This is the first time Korette — and certainly she 
does not suspect me — has alluded to the Golden Goat. 


XLI 


THE ROBBERY 

\ 

These events, especially the last one, must have 
had their influence upon Monsieur Honnorat’s sudden 
resolve to visit some relatives in a village among the 
mountains. 

Mademoiselle Xorette suggests that I slialBaccom- 
pany them on the journey. Monsieur Iionnorat in- 
sists upon it. It would be a charming trip through 
a picturesque region where the streams are swarming 
with trout. Saladine would take charge of the house. 

I resist, though sorely tempted. With Galfar and 
his Piedmontese in the dwelling, I don’t consider my 
presence needless to guard the tower with Saladine. 

Urgent work — a plea I have invented — serves me 
as an excuse. Besides — this is an excellent opportu- 
nity — why shouldn’t I use these three days in arrang- 
ing the notes, collected hap-hazard from my reading 
and my walks, for the work I had in view when I 
settled, three months ago, at Puget-Maure ? 

But I fear Galfar’s entrances and exits, airs of mys- 
tery and menace, will not allow me sufficient leisure: 

Galfar is preparing a surprise. I know it through 
Ganteauine, who learned it from Peu-Parle. 


168 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


What surprise? A robbery, doubtless. And it 
will be easy for him, since, thanks to his cleve/idea 
of paving, there he is on the spot with his three 
bravos. 

Luckily, I am on the watch, Ganteaume keeps the 
best lookout he is able, and we can rely On the nfore 
than masculine courage and long arms of Saladine. 

During two days, which is natural enough, and two 
nights, which somewhat humiliates me, nothing hap- 
pens. But on the third, about eleven o’clock, the vil- 
lage being asleep, I suddenly hear the donkey bray in 
the stable at the end of the passage. 

Then a door creaks, heavy footsteps ascend the 
staircase, and from my window, looking out upon the 
garden, I see Galfar, who, with a gesture of the hand 
as if to stop some people who are following him, puts 
his ear against the blinds of the ground-floor room 
where Saladine sleeps. 

“ Go on,” he mutters ; “ don’t make a sound. I’ll 
keep watch here, in case she should wake.” 

The Piedmontese are evidently ordered to rifle No- 
rette’s chambers of its treasures; they will force the 
door. Galfar contents himself with issuing com- 
* mands, being far too well-born to condescend to such 
business. 

What if I should send a bullet at Galfar as an an- 
swer to his double shot ? 

Suddenly some one below shouts : 

“ Oh ! Saladine . . . oh ! Gazan . . 

“Oh! ba-a-ak-er!” responds Saladine, in a drowsy 
voice. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


169 


It is the baker on his rounds through the village, 
calling the hour when the leaven would be ready for 
the people who are to bake on the morrow, and stop- 
ping under the windows instead of knocking at the 
doors, less from indolence than from the decorative 
necessity of filling the deep silence of the night with 
the noise of his voice. 

Galfar has disappeared. Light shines from a win- 
dow ; Saladine is getting up. 

Then the window is dark again, and on the bricks of 
the staircase, the stones of the Donkey’s Passage, I hear 
for an instant Saladine’s shuffling steps as she moves 
away, while, departing to other patrons, the baker’s 
call, “ Oh ! Myon ... oh ! Nore ... oh ! Madon . . .” 
grows more and more indistinct. 

I supposed myself rid of my robbers, but after van- 
ishing an instant they reappeared as soon as Saladine 
had fairly gone. 

What can I do, one against four? Wake Gan- 
teaume, who is asleep over my head in the garret? 
Ganteaume has a brave spirit. But he must be 
dreaming of Norette; it is better to leave him to his 
dreams. 

Meanwhile I hear a noise like a screw squeaking, 
wood grinding. The robbers are getting in. I have 
an idea ! 

The door of the Donkey’s Passage, which leads into 
the little square, is open, and, according to the patri- 
archal customs of the country, a key — a huge key, big 
enough to fell an ox — is left in the lock. 

I will go out, fasten the door on the outside, and 


170 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


passing through the lower part of the village mount 
guard below the garden before the only outlet Galfar 
and his ruffians would take, and which Galfar, at 
least, had known since the episode of the stone — that 
is, the foot of the slope up which I climbed to meet 
Norette. 

Their surprise accomplished, finding the door lock- 
ed, they will try to escape by this way. 


XLII 


“gueito ” 

Key in hand — why had I kept it? — I hurriedly 
cross the dark square, where there is no lantern ; I 
thread the vaulted arcades, the streets, a sort of stair- 
case cut in the living rock ; I pass through the ina- 
chicolated postern where huge tufts of maidenhair 
sway at the will of a perpetual draught, and conceal 
myself in the shadow exactly in front of the stone 
my imprudent climb pushed down the other day. 

Raising my head, I see above me the village, the 
house of the Gazans, with its square tower, its old 
walls clothed with ivy, and for a j)edestal support- 
ing the whole a pyramid of small gardens, rising one 
above another like steps. 

One alone interests me — that at the very top ; 
where, relieved against the bright sky, restless shad- 
ows are moving to and fro. 

I have done well in hastening. 

I am barely there before three of the shadows be- 
stride the wall and cautiously let themselves slip down 
the rock ; a fourth follows, carrying something that 
looks like a gun slung by a shoulder-belt, 

“Ecco, signor.” 


m 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


On meeting, the Piedmontese, for it was they, give 
Galfar something and scamper off away from the vil- 
lage, without a glance behind, catching their heels in 
the pebbles and getting entangled in the broom and 
myrtles. 

They disappear. Galfar, relieved, and hencefor- 
ward certain that the Italians will be suspected, sits 
down by the roadside, draws from the huge pocket 
forming a bag in the back of his jacket the mysteri- 
ous object the fugitives handed him, and gazes com- 
placently at it, for the faint light of dawn has blend- 
ed for a few moments with the paling lustre of the 
stars. 

I recognize Mise Jano’s bell, the bell of the Golden 
Goat. 

A leap, Galfar yells, the bell rolls on the ground, 
and with it the massive iron key with which I have 
dealt the blow, and which I drop to arm myself with 
my pistol. 

Galfar turns. My pistol stops him, and he draws 
back conquered, muttering menacing words and sup- 
porting his bruised and bleeding wrist with his left 
hand. 

Thinking him faraway, I stoop to pick up the pre- 
cious bell I have at last won, when a shout startles 
me. 

“ Gueito !” cries Galfar, a word which in the lan- 
guage of Puget-Maure means “ beware !” 

Forty yards off, I see, in the broadening light of 
day, my furious foe holding with his one sound hand 
his gun to his cheek and taking aim. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


173 


I have a pistol. Let us take aim, at all events. 

“ Gueito !” cries Galfar again. Without waiting 
for me he fires. I fall. Perhaps he has fired too 
soon. But, at any rate, it was after having warned 

me ; and, after all, honor is safe. 

12 




XLIII 


THE GOOD GENDARME 

Where am I? My astonished eyes do not recog- 
nize the cold, bare room in the tower which they usu- 
ally behold at the hour I generally awake. 

Yataghans, red clay pipes incrusted with filigree, 
round tablps and mirrors adorned with coral and 
mother-of-pearl, rugs, hangings — why, it is Monsieur 
Honnorat’s room, the one whiclr, with a touch of ex- 
aggeration, he calls his chamber of wonders, while 
Mademoiselle Norette says, simply, the treasure-room. 

It seems that I owe my life to Peu-Parle, who i& 
always astir at daybreak, and whose sudden appear- 
ance, when the gun was fired, put my unknown mur- 
derer to flight. 

I had fainted. Some peasants, summoned by Peu- 
Parle, laid me on a donkey and carried me to the 
Gazans, where, finding the tower staircase too narrow 
to carry up a wounded man, Saladine took it upon 
herself — kind Saladine — to transform Monsieur Hon- 
norat’s chamber into an infirmary for me. Never 
mind if Monsieur Honnorat is vexed. He will only 
have to change his habits and smoke his pipes else- 
where. 


TH35 GOLDEN GOAT 


175 


For Monsieur Honnorat and Horette have not yet 
returned. There is nobody with me except Peu-Parle 
and Saladine. Ganteaume, having assisted in a first 
hasty bandaging, has gone, I don’t know where, in 
search of a doctor. 

Yet some one is bending over my bed, talking to 
me as though. I were a child, murmuring gentle words. 
Was it Norette or only Monsieur Honnorat? — the 
delicate, Oriental profile of the daughter, or the fat 
face, so cheerful in its egotism, of her worthy father? 

Confound it, it is a gendarme ! A good old gen- 
darme, with a wax-colored mustache, a shoulder-belt, 
and a three-cornered hat — regular official costume. 

“ This is the fourth time he has come to inquire 
about you since you met with an accident this morn- 
ing,” says Saladine. So much interest touches me ; 
weak, and a little light-headed, I feel ready to open 
my heart to the representative of authority. 

Meanwhile, without urgency, without even seeming 
to do so, the worthy gendarme is questioning me. 
True, he puts on gloves for the purpose, but they are 
official ones, and, spite of my condition, I have no diffi- 
culty in baffling his blunt and artless diplomacy. 

This gendarme, who is comparatively well educated, 
wishing to do himself the credit of an official report, 
“noted on the spot,” would like to know when and 
how and by whom I was wounded. 

“Why, dear me,” I replied, “I thought you were 
sufficiently shrewd to have guessed the whole affair 
at once. I was wounded this morning by one— I don’t 
know which — of the three Piedmontese employed to 


176 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


pave the Donkey’s Passage whom I surprised in 
the act of robbing the house. Did they actually 
rob it?” 

“ Alas !” replied Saladine. 

“ They haven’t been seen since.” 

“ And never will be !” 

“ Then their absence denounces them. Besides, as 
well as the darkness allowed me to see, they wore 
heavy unpolished boots and spoke Italian.” 

The gendarme listened to my words with a vexed, 
suspicious expression. 

“We have proved the robbery, 'and your deposi- 
tions agree. Still, the shot surprises me. The Pied- 
montese do not generally use guns.” 

“Yet I have received a bullet.” 

“Undoubtedly. But coming thus from a simple 
Piedmontese a bullet is not to be expected,” replied 
the gendarme, who evidently had his suspicions and 
his idea. “ Do not you happen to know of any rival, 
any enemy ?” 

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, let the poor gentleman 
alone !” interrupted Saladine. “ He is almost ready 
to faint, and I did very wrong to allow you to come 
in before the doctor.” 

The gendarme bowed and smiled. The smile 
meant : 

“These are Puget-Maure affairs. You don’t want 
the Government to meddle with them.” 

Then he marched out with soldierly bearing, and 
Saladine, jealous above all else of the Gazan honor, 
happy at having escaped scandal, cast at me the only 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


177 


pleasant glance I have ever known her to give, while 
Peu-Parle, clinching his teeth, muttered : 

“ You are right ; gendarmes have nothing to do 
with honest people’s quarrels. Yet this morning, 
strictly between ourselves, I thought I recognized the 
crack of Galfar’s gun.” 






XLIY 


DREAMS 

How many tilings have happened within these few 
days ! How many events and surprises ! How much 
happiness has come to me ! My heart is glad and my 
brain seems bewildered. 

All my previsions are realized. 

The success of my adventure exceeds my hopes. 

Poor Galfar imagined that, by seizing the bell, he 
would be master of the Golden Goat. 

Galfar must understand by this time that the Golden 
Goat does not yield to idle threats. Proud, it hates 
deeds of violence ; one must know how -to please, to 
charm it ; the rest is useless. 

Mise Jano’s bell has certainly been of service to 
me. I have deciphered, though not without difficulty, 
the words engraved on it, and in this way obtained 
the necessary clew. 

But what should I have done without Horette ? It 
is she who has sustained and encouraged me. Thanks 
to her, for her sake, I have courage to persevere in 
the enterprise — spite of Galfar, the people of Puget, 
their open wrath and secret ambushes. "With her, at 
the time of the solstice, at the hour designated, the 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


179 


shadow of the rock marking the spot, we beheld, hav- 
ing removed a little earth and turf, the mysterious 
iron coffer, the depository of the secret. 

We went at night into a wild valley. Lofty rocks 
were outlined against a star -strewn sky, and Mise 
Jano, with her bell on her neok, followed us. To- 
gether, by a mutual effort, Norette helping me with 
her little brown hands, we made the moving stone 
turn. Oh, the dazzling radiance at the very end of 
the grotto, whose narrow passages we slowly followed 
hand in hand ! 

There, in countless numbers, flashing in the light of 
our torch, lay the King of Majorca’s treasures. I 
have seen them ; my eyes are dazzled by that one view 
for a single instant. I shall not see them again for a 
month, on the day of our marriage. This is Korette’s 
wish, and I must obey her. 


XLV 


MORE DREAMS 

Oh, I have obeyed, I have waited ! Very rich and 
very happy, thanks to the fantastic Goat and its ex- 
haustless heaps of gold, Xorette and I have done mar- 
vellous things. 

In the first place Puget-Maure, whitewashed from 
base to summit, glitters in the sun like a diamond on 
its cliff. Loaded with Norette’s gifts, the inhabitants 
have become so many little lords, and no longer poach, 
except for their own amusement. Monsieur Honno- 
rat, still mayor — though he now smokes his pipe in 
Turkish costume — devised the clever plan of placing 
at the entrance of the village a placard bearing the 
following inscription : 

MUNICIPAL ORDER 

Poverty is forbidden on the Territory of this Parish 

Peu-Parle, aided by the good gendarme, will have 
charge of ferreting out the delinquents, who will be 
pitilessly arrested and allowed to remain only on con- 
dition of accepting new clothes and a well-filled purse. 
Those who are wicked and refuse will be promptly 
conducted to the frontier. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


181 


For the time a certain egotism absorbs me, and I 
devote my thoughts mainly to Norette — that is, to my- 
self. 

I have rebuilt for her, in elegant Moorish style, 
the ruined palace where we gathered the Queen’s 
flowers amid the rocks and precipices. Norette is 
queen, queen of the gypsies ; she wears robes embroid- 
ered with pearls and rubies, decks herself with rare 
gems. Saladine serves her ; only Saladine is a ne- 
gress, and her name is Sarah, which, however, does 
not seem to surprise any one. 

I am forgetting to say that Mise Jano — between 
ourselves, she was really the Golden Goat, and the 
other morning, having caught her by the horns, I was 
amazed by the weight and the cold, metallic feeling of 
her fleece — yes, I am forgetting to say that Mise Jano 
lives at the end of a garden gay with jets of water 
falling into marble basins and planted with Oriental 
trees, a delicious open-air pavilion ; and every Sunday 
Abbe Sebe celebrates the mass in a chapel surmounted 
by a calotte of painted bricks, wdiose bells chime from 
a minaret. 

In addition to this, I intend to use the fortune for 
which destiny has made me accountable in the service 
of France and of humanity. I have great plans in 
view; but before carrying them into execution I am 
waiting for the arrival of Ganteaume, who has his own 
ideas about them. 

Ganteaume alone is absent from Puget. He has 
set off on Arlatan to go to Little Camargues to find 
Skipper Euf and Tardive. But all three will soon re- 


182 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


turn. A signal will announce the mooring of their 
galley in the calanque of Aygues-Seches. We will 
load her with precious stones. I will embark with 
Norette and make the tour of the world . . . 

In the midst of my dreams — I understand now that 
they are dreams caused by the fever — keen pain some- 
times blended with them, like the sharp pang from 
some imperfectly healed wound. Then I encountered 
Galfar, a spiteful sarcastic Galfar, whose smile froze 
my blood. 

Then the pain ceased, to give way again to fairy 
visions, visions of power, of a free, noble life spent, 
with Love for a companion, in saijjng over blue seas, 
past fertile shores, where groups of white cities, palaces 
of brilliant hues, are hidden among the palm-trees. 


XLYI 


CONVALESCENCE 

One morning the dreams vanish, and I find myself 
again lying in the chamber of wonders. 

Memory returns, and I recall the Piedmontese, the 
bell, Galfars shot. The ball has been extracted ; but 
for. nearly two weeks I lay delirious, hovering between 
life and death. Galfar did his work thoroughly. 

How many kind hearts surround me ! 

Ganteaume is so delighted when I recognize him 
and call him by his name (“ Ganteaume ! ”) that he 
runs off into a corner to cry. 

Saladine, now that I am out of danger, abuses the 
doctor, and, to effect a complete cure, daily invents 
some new potion composed of herbs gathered by her 
own hands and harmless, at any rate. 

Monsieur Honnorat — tremendous sacrifice ! — some- 
times abstains from smoking, and sits beside my pil- 
low for many a half hour, telling me for the fiftieth 
time the story of his voyages. 

The abbe bears me no ill-will, though disappoint- 
ed. He had confidently expected to send my soul to 
heaven with a first-class viaticum, the soul of a scholar 
who would do him honor in the world above. “ What 


184 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 



can you expect V 1 
he adds, with his 
peasant frank- 
ness, “ every man 
has his personal 
vanity, and such 
opportunities are 
not often found 
in Puget-Maure.” 



THE GOLDEN GOAT 


185 


Every one feels kindly towards me. The worst ene- 
mies the Golden Goat made for me are anxious, and 
at bakery, barber’s shop, and fountain ask how I am 
faring. Our revengeful Saladine enjoys snubbing 
them. 

This sudden- change is doubtless due to my chival- 
ric attitude concerning Galfar when examined by the 
good gendarme. 

What am I saying? Galfar himself seems glad to 
know that I am not dead and have thus spared him a 
disagreeable complication with the Court of Assizes. 
Galfar, supposing that my appetite has already re- 
turned, deigned to send me, no later than yesterday, 
by Peu-Parle, all the game he had killed the even- 
ing before. 

And Norette ? And the Golden Goat ? 

With regard to the Golden Goat, in which I be- 
lieve more fully than ever, one thing is sufficient for 
me to know — that the bell is saved. I was clinching 
it in my hand, Peu-Parle tells me, when he raised me 
bleeding from the stones. 

Mademoiselle Norette’s manner makes me a little 
uneasy. I can remember, in certain lucid intervals of 
my delirium, an anxious, eager Norette bending over 
me with a pale face and troubled eyes. 

Yet now ISTorette is no longer the same. She seems 
to have closed her heart, and appears to remember 
nothing. Sometimes I ask myself whether I did not 
dream of the evenings spent in lovers’ talk in the 
garden under the favoring light of the stars, as I 
dreamed of our visit to the grotto of the Golden Goat. 


* 











THE GOLDEN GOA.T 


187 


This state of affairs tortures me horribly, and pre- 
vents my appreciating the full sweetness of the joys 
of convalescence. To Teel life reviving after we be- 
lieve ourselves dying makes the soul experience the 
emotions one has on returning home. But what can 
this mean? A sky so blue, a sun so bright, flowers, 
perfumes, the carolling of birds, and — no smile from 
Norette». . . 

I have a childish desire for this smile, more than a 
desire — an absolute necessity. I expected it when I 
opened my eyes; it was part of my cure. 

Norette, alas, will no longer smile upon me ! Her 
glance has told me so, a glance of scorn and pity, here, 
in the garden, for I sometimes walk a few steps, with 
her support, near the laurel-trees whose dense shades 
used to conceal us, beside the bench where we have 
so often sat. 

I tried to kiss her hand, to speak of the past, but 
that clear glance stopped me. 

What have X done to deserve Norette’s hate? 

Nothing ! Only Norette is a woman, and, I know 
not why, either from sheer caprice or a desire to tort- 
ure, she employs against me that terrible faculty of 
forgetfulness which women possess, airs of ignorance, 
artless denials, that would make the most triumphant 
Don Juan doubt on the morrow a love he had won 
the night before. 



XL VII 

OFF FOR THE CREEK 

One morning Monsieur Honnorat comes in, jovial 
and noisy, equipped in full fishing costume. 

“Come, get up; everything is settled. The doctor 
sanctions the expedition. The new moon appeared 
last night, and the sea-cliestnuts must be plump.” 

Every convalescent is alive to good eating. The 
word sea-cliestnuts suddenly roused an indescribable 
gastronomic nostalgia which had slept in the depths 
of my being. 

For at least six months Monsieur Honnorat had 
promised me this fishing excursion, and we had often 
risen before daybreak to go down to the calanque , 
hoping to have fine weather. 

But each time a malicious little breeze, ruffling the 
surface of the water, compelled us to defer the expe- 
dition. The sort of fishing we desire requires a per- 
fectly dead calm. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


189 


This morning everything promised to be just what 
we wanted : not a breath of air, and down below not 
a wrinkle on the sea. 

“ So our object is to catch sea-urchins ?” 

“Exactly! We shall start in fifteen minutes ; most 
of the party on foot ; you, to avoid fatigue, on Sala- 
din. Galfar will lead him. We ought to be already 
at Aygues - Seches, where we are to have a surprise. 
We shall fish till it grows warm, and then make the 
bouillabaisse under the pines.” 

I accept eagerly. Norette persists in evading me 
when I want to speak to her ; on the way I shall 
doubtless find an opportunity to have an explanation. 

During the wdiole long descent Yorette, walking be- 
side the donkey, does not deign to address a word to 
me. She was talking unconcernedly with her father 
about a lawsuit which summons them to Arles and 
will probably require a long stay there. Perhaps, in 
consequence of these new interests, they will be com- 
pelled to leave Puget-Maure forever. Then what will 
become of me? 

But Norette does not even see me ; Norette does 
not care for my troubles. 

Yet she is kind-hearted; she feels anxious about 
Mise Jano’s fate. 

“Pshaw!” says Monsieur Honnorat, “we’ll give 
her to Peu-Parle ; the crazy fellow is fond of animals. 
Mise Jano can’t help being happy with him.” 

Mademoiselle Norette assents, smoothing Saladin’s 
rough hair with her hand — the supple brown hand I 

have often pressed. 

13 






) 








THE GOLDEN GOAT 


191 


How little this trip resembles our rambles among 
the mountains in the dawn of our love, when I was 
jealous of Ganteaume, and Mise Jano followed us. 

The surprise is Skipper Ruf and Tardive, who, in- 
formed of our plan by worthy Monsieur ITonnorat, 
are waiting for us in tlie^big boat. 

“ Why, is it you, Skipper Ruf — and Tardive 
There are mutual embraces. Ganteaume is delight- 
ed, and Monsieur Honnorat, who knew the, whole 
plan, feigns to be the most astonished of all. 

I alone cannot be merry, and continue to wear a 
dull face. Luckily, by way of excuse, I have the pre- 
text of invalidism. 


XLVIII 


CATCHING- SEA-URCHINS 

Meanwhile Skipper Ruf was growing impatient. 

“Well, will you come along, you good-for-nothing 
cabin-boy? We’ve been waiting two hours .’ 7 

At first I supposed he was speaking to Ganteauine. 
But Skipper Ruf instantly added : 

“May heaven’s thunder blast me if one can do any- 
thing with this brute !” 

I was amazed that worthy Skipper Ruf, usually so 
calm and so well-mannered, should speak in such a 
way, and especially to his son. But I perceived that 
he was laughing in his sleeve though he raised his 
voice, and understood that his wrath was feigned. 

A man with a gray beard came out of the clump 
of tamarisks, holding in each hand a varnished 
dourgue ,* which he had just filled at the spring. 
Though clad like a common sailor, lie wore the red 
rosette in his button-hole. 

“Is it you, colonel?” cried Monsieur Honnorat. 
“ What favoring breeze, what lucky chance . . .” 

But Skipper Ruf gave him no time to answer. 


* Leather pail. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


193 


\ 

Come, boy, pass me the dourgue , and be quicker 
than that about it; my tongue is parched.” 

The boy, over fifty years old, an officer of the Le- 
gion of Honor, passed the dourgue. Skipper Ruf 
seemed greatly amused. He pretended to calm him- 
self after drinking a cup of cold water, and the cabin- 
boy with the rank of colonel found an opportunity to 
say a few words of explanation. 

There were at Antibes a dozen retired officers who 
were undergoing the same fate as himself. 

Seized with the craze for the sea, and spending 
three-quarters of their lives on the water, these land- 
owners, to escape the tyranny of a regulation which 
is not lenient to amateur mariners, and avoid, once for 
all, the annoyances and fines of the terrible commis- 
sioner of the port, had resolved to obtain the commis- 
sion of skippers of fishing-craft. 

But before being a skipper it is necessary, accord- 
ing to the Colbert law still in force on our coasts, to 
serve an apprenticeship as cabin-boy. 

So these worthy folk served a bona fide apprentice- 
ship as cabin-boys with skipper friends who meant 
\ kindly by them. The skippers, of course, treated 
them as cabin-boys. 

“For my part,” said the colonel, philosophically, 
“I haven’t much cause to complain. Skipper Ruf 
yells, but lie’s a good fellow. I know some who are 
worse off . . 

At that moment Skipper Ruf began to storm 
again : 

“ The phial of oil, the baskets, the oars.” 


194 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


“Here they are, at your service. The skipper is 
getting angry ; let us go on board.” 

I was somewhat surprised to see no nets in the 
boat. 

“With what, then, are the sea-urchins caught?” 

“Patience. We shall find more implements than 
we need in the cane plantations of Yau-Mejane.” 

In fact, as we coasted along Yau-Mejane, the colo- 
nel, attentive to his duties as cabin-boy, though a trifle 
mortified by Norette’s presence, went ashore and cut 
several long stalks in a thicket of ragged, quivering 
reeds. 

Then, having re-embarked, he stripped the canes of 
their leaves, cut four slits in one end and put into it, 
to hold the four sections apart, a round stone picked 
up on the shore expressly for the purpose. He 
shaped them, tied them with strings, waxed them, 
and in this way made utensils somewhat similar to 
the fruit-pickers used by gardeners. 

The most successful one was for Horette. 

During this important operation Skipper Ruf, aided 
by Ganteaume, using the sail and the oars by turns, 
had conveyed us to the desired goal. 

On a bed of rocks and algse we saw, through the 
luminous green water, sea-urchins moving about, trav- 
elling along a little sideways on their mobile prickles, 
so that they looked like huge living chestnuts bristling 
in their shells. 

We had only to gather them, which at first sight 
seemed simple. 

You plunge the reed into the water, aim at the 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


195 


creature, press it down, draw it up. Ah, no ; it’s not 
quite so easy as that! Monsieur Honnorat, Gan- 
teaume, and Horette are skilful in this sport, and rare- 
ly miss their mark. The colonel and I fail every 
time. It’s the very deuce to direct, nearly two fath- 
oms under water, a cane-stalk which, by the refrac- 
tion of the light, looks as though it were broken into 
halves. 

Lying face downward, I fairly blind myself scan- 
ning these clear, glittering, sun-steeped depths, which 
seem like waves of molten emeralds. 

Victory ! Scraping to and fro, my cane at last 
comes up with a sea-urchin at the end. Alas ! a blue 
sea-urchin ! Instead of being mahogany color, mine 
has a tiny bead of the palest turquoise shade at the 
end of each prickle. 

Very pretty to look at is the blue sea-urchin, but 
perfectly detestable to eat. 

All laugh at me for this wonderful exploit, FTo- 
rette even more than the others. But Skipper Buf 
takes pity on me, relieves me of my duties as fisher- 
man, and places the phial of oil in my care. 

The wind has risen, the sea begins to dimple, and 
the depths are disturbed. Following the imme- 
morial usage the Provencals obtain from the Greeks, 
I sprinkle with a feather a few drops of oil on the 
waves around the boat. It spreads, the ripples van- 
ish, and the sea, in the midst of rising waves, once 
more becomes, for the space of several feet, as smooth 
as slightly iridescent glass. 

Sea -urchins, and more sea-urchins! Dozens sue- 


196 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


ceed dozens. At last Skipper Ruf lays down his 
spear, lights his pipe, and says we have caught enough 
and it is time for breakfast. 

Nine o’clock, and the sun is already high in the 
heavens. We land and encamp in the shade of a 
gray rock strewn with pine-needles. 

Yonder in the distance, beyond the gulf, stretches 
the superb curve of the coast-line between the azure 
sea and the purple Alps, whose jagged peaks are cov- 
ered with snow. The sea sighs lazily, and the pines 
answer the sea. 

Then, forgetting the sea-urchins in gazing at Mad- 
emoiselle Norette, who is still impassive and haughty, 
I begin to envy the colonel. He has no thought 
of love-affairs ; a word of encouragement from Skip- 
per Ruf is sweeter to his heart than all Norette’s 
smiles ; and I would gladly be, like him, a cabin-boy — 
yes, a good old gray-bearded cabin-boy, with friend 
Ruf for skipper. 


XLIX 


THE SACRIFICE 

A hundred sea-urchins eaten on the beach hardly 
count, except as an appetizer. We are now to fish 
along the windings of the coast for the pey San-Peire , 
the rascasse , and other savory rockfish that are indis- 
pensable ingredients of the bouillabaisse planned for 
our noon-day dinner. Here people dine at noon, every 
nation having its own customs. 

Skipper Ruf gives me a line and a handful of 
mouredus ,* and I essay the feat of keeping my balance 
in the broad sunlight on the steep promontories and 
sharp white rocks of the shore. 

But I had trusted my strength too far. The dan- 
cing of the sunbeams on the water, my fixed atten- 
tion, have dimmed my eyes and troubled my head. 
The mingled odors of the pine-trees and the sea- weed, 
the sea-air I inhale with delight, fairly intoxicate me. 
I feel a need of sleep, an irresistible desire to lie mo- 
tionless at ease ; and having given my line to the 
colonel, I stagger like a drunken man as I go to 
stretch myself on the bottom of the boat which lies 
moored in a hollow of the cliff. 


* Limpets. 


198 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


The boat rocks, creaking on the lapping tide. 
Above my head, shutting out the sun, arches a damp 
vault in crusted with salt, where pebbles shine, patelles* 
live, and, at the changeless low -water mark, grow 
mosses of bitter odors and marine plants. 

I have closed my eyes and lost myself in a dream. 

Is it not here, in this gulf, at the deepest part of the 
blue abyss, that ages ago the fabled city, the ancient 
Atlantis, vanished with its portals and marble towers, 
whose splendor Skipper Ruf one day described ? 

But the sea gently recedes from beneath the boat, 
and the boat, descending with it, leaves me on golden 
.sands strewn with pearls. 

And lo, Norette, her hair crowned with coral, in 
the costume of the fairy Ocean, takes me by the hand, 
leads me into a vast city, and shows me her palace, 
her treasures. 

Always dreams, always treasures, always Norette. 

A jar interrupts my light slumber. 

The boat has struck against the rock ; Some one 
has leaped into her. 

I start up and see Norette, who, after avoiding me 
for a week, now seeks me. 

Ganteaume accompanies her and unties the rope. 

“ Come Ganteaume, you shall row.” 

Then, addressing me : 

“We can talk better at sea; I have some very im- 
portant things to say to yon.” 

Listening to her agitated voice, and meeting the 


* Whelks. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


199 


earnest gaze of' her beautiful eyes, whose glance ex- 
presses sorrow rather than anger, I feel my face flush, 
though I could not have explained why. 

“ It is about the Golden Goat,” she adds. 

At the words, by a sudden vision, I at last divined 
the motives — but too well justified — of her manner. 
I tried to speak, but could find no words. 

“ Deny nothing, explain nothing ! Some things 
cannot be retrieved. Would to heaven Galfar’s bul- 
let had killed you ! Perhaps I might have died, too ; 
and even if the black earth had not desired me, at 
least I should have remained your widow, with an 
eternal grief in* my heart for a love in which I be- 
lieved. But in your fever you dreamed aloud, too 
loudly for my happiness, since, alas ! I understood the 
meaning of your words. Gold, diamonds, the Goat, 
the bell . . . And through one whole long night, 
which seemed endless beside your pillow, from the 
lips I watched, rejoicing over the breath of returning 
life, I gathered, syllable by syllable, the painful, humili- 
ating certain ty that, knowing I loved you, you had no 
love for me.” 

Beautiful, indeed, and worthy of any heart, was this 
proud child, awaked to womanhood by her keen anger. 

I tried to kiss her hands, bathing them with un- 
feigned team. 

Shaking her head gently she repelled me, sadly, 
yet firmly. 

“ What avails this, since I know all is over — since, 
even if you spoke the truth, I should refuse to believe 
you.” 


200 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


The absolute finality of the decree roused me, and 
the feeling of rebellion inspired a certain degree of> 
courage. 

“Listen, Norette, I will be frank! What I am 
about to say should be confessed to you on my knees, 
if my wound would permit and the boat was not piled 
with the shells of so many sea-urchins. Yes, a series 
of singular events, among which, in the first place, 
was the finding the bell, made me guess, with no 
premeditation on my part, both your Oriental origin 
and the secret you possess concerning the King of 
Majorca’s treasure. At the time I met you I had lit- 
tle belief in the treasure. Gradually, without reflect- 
ing, I became accustomed to confound both you and 
the treasure in the same vague hopes of conquest. 
Why did I not speak of it to you ? My silence was 
my sole crime, an involuntary one which I am expiat- 
ing, since it costs me your love. But, if it is true that 
the words you have uttered to-day predict an eternal 
separation, I swear here, before God, in the presence 
of Ganteaume, that no interested motives guided my 
steps when I followed the stony bed of the torrent 
which led me to Puget-Maure ; I swear that the first 
time I saw you, ready to love you already, Norette, 

I was perfectly ignorant of the existence — nay, the 
very name — of the Golden Goat !” 

My pleading contained a little truth and a great 
deal of falsehood, but the facts were so far distant, 
and my feelings had changed so greatly since then, 
that falsehood and truth might conscientiously be con- 
founded. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


201 


Norette was thinking : “ Does he believe he is tell- 
ing the truth ?” 

I : “If she would but pretend to believe me.” 

Two lovers are very near an understanding when 
their wishes are mute accomplices. 

But Norette did not yield. 

Ganteaume, greatly troubled by this conversation, 
with a few hasty strokes of the oars doubled a small 
cape, whose rocky mass — white near the sea, crowned 
with myrtles on the summit — concealed us from curi- 
ous eyes. 

“ You are not mistaken, the treasure does exist,” 
ISTorette went on. “ The secret has been in our fam- 
ily ever since the defeat and embarkation of the 
Moors. Long preserved by tradition, it was not until 
the fourteenth century that one of our ancestors, 
Maitre Michel Gazan, astrologer and physician to 
Queen Jeanne, made and engraved — fearing the 
knowledge might finally be lost — the famous talis- 
man representing a bell of Saracenic pattern. . . . 
Take it, take it, here it is, red with your blood as 
when you snatched it from Galfar ! Take it ! Why 
hesitate ? Will you not then have all you sought from 
Norette?” 

I took the bell. Norette turned pale, but a flash of 
pleasure illumined Ganteaume’s mournful eyes. To 
accept the treasure meant to renounce ISTorette, and, 
should I do that, Ganteaume might hope. 

I sat erect; the glittering silver bell trembled be- 
tween my thumb and forefinger, and the sunbeams, 
the reflection from the water, flashed on the turquoises 


202 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


and diamonds set in the intaglios of the 
arabesque encircling the edge. 

At that moment I might have read 
springing, I know not whence, dimmed 
prevented me. 

44 So this is to part 11s forever ?” I ask 

44 Forever !” she replied. 


inscription in 

it, but a tear 
my eyes and 

ed Norette. 









THE GOLDEN GOAT 


203 


“Nothing on earth is of so much/ralue as love. 
Why sadden our lives with what keeps our hearts 
asunder ? The sea under the boat is deep ; I have 
only to open my fingers and the secret of the Golden 
Goat will be buried forever.” 

“You are the master!” sighed Norette. 

I held the little bell suspended an instant longer, 
then bending forward, unclasped my fingers. Slowly, 
gently, as if reluctant, it sank, swaying to and fro, and, 
like a paling white star, at last disappeared in the 
depths of the transparent water. The King of Ma- 
jorca’s treasures joined Skipper Ruf’s. 

From the top of the cape among the myrtles Mon- 
sieur Honnorat called : 

“ Come, children, the breeze is failing, and Tardive 
has served the bouillabaisse .” 

Ganteaume, utterly miserable, having lost both love 
and wealth, was mingling his tears with the shower 
of drops falling from the oars. 

But Norette was in my arms, and, absorbed in the 
divine egotism of love, we did not even see his tears. 


/ 




L 

A DAY OF JOY AND AN EVENING OF SORROW 

Sadly, and with a soul steeped in melancholy, do I 
resume — having promised myself I would — the me- 
moirs interrupted for six months by happiness, as the 
signal-telegraph sometimes used to be by the fog. 

Happiness? Yes; from the day I married No- 
rette I have enjoyed a calm, sincere happiness, which 
nothing would have lessened had it not been for the 
grief that suddenly darkened with its shadow the soft, 
steady light of our honeymoon. 

The wedding over — how much powder was burned 
during la Bravade, and how many newly flayed skins 
garlanded the Gazan door-way on this occasion! — a 
steadfast calm, after so many exciting events, again 
reigned at Puget-Maure. 

Ganteaume, bereft of his illusions, went back to the 
Little Camargue. A remnant of his former love still 
occupies his heart, but the sea will console him. He 
comes up to see us once a week, sometimes with Tar- 
dive, sometimes with Skipper Ruf, and brings us fish 
or shell-fish. We intend to spend a whole spring in 
their enlarged cottage, and Norette grows enthusiastic 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


205 


over the idea of sleeping under the pretty dark-green 
velvet ceiling, formed by the wrong side of a roof 
made of long feathery reeds. 

The house remains unchanged, still white and old, 
with its cool court-yard covered by a vine-clad arbor, 
its small hanging-garden fragrant with sage and rose- 
mary. We have not even touched the pavement of 
the Donkey’s Passage, though Galfar, fairly van- 
quished by my generosity, has yielded his right to the 
stable at the end, and thus terminated old dissensions 
before taking a voyage to India, whose expenses Mon- 
sieur Honnorat desired to pay. 

Saladin belongs to us; he occupies the stable, 
with Mise Jano. Saladine has insensibly fallen into 
the habit of giving him her dead husband’s name. 

I am trying to continue my work, and worthy Abbe 
Sebe, as before, borrows my gun whenever opportu- 
nity offers. 

Yet our archaeological researches, our pauses before 
time-worn stones, have ceased to anger the peasants. 
No one gives any further thought to the King of Ma- 
jorca’s treasures — no one, that is, except Peu-Parle — 
who, disturbed for a while by these incidents, has now 
returned to his usual place under the Goat’s Kock, 
and so long as the sun shines continues his interrupted 
dream. 

What shall I say of Norette ? She does not belie 
the prophecies contained in the basket presented by 
the three old women. Always good as bread, pure as 
salt, industrious as a distaff, I hope, at no distant day, 

to see her do honor to the fourth wish. 

14 


206 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


She has whispered something in my ear. Skipper 
Ruf shall be godfather. 

Since Monsieur Honnorat has had the hope of being 
a grandfather, he cannot keep quiet. The Turk in 
his temperament has vanished. No more afternoon 
siestas, no more of those endless idle hours spent sit- 
ting and thinking of nothing while he smoked his 
pipes. He feels a constant desire to keep in motion, 
a thoroughly juvenile activity. 

“Let us be stirring,” he repeats. Monsieur Hon- 
norat desires riches for his grandson, and with this 
praiseworthy intent has set to work to restore the vine- 
yards of Puget-Maure. According to him, wine for- 
merly flowed through the village streets as the water 
now pours down after a rain. That is why all the 
houses have such large cellars, with vats bricked like 
towers, and casks of cut stone to provide for excep- 
tional years, when the wooden ones did not suffice. 
But at last, by dint of requiring too much from them, 
the vines have become exhausted. 

To think that, from the days of Noah, we have al- 
ways depended upon slips, and nobody ever thought 
of renewing by young vines raised from seeds plants I 
know not how many centuries old ! How could it be 
supposed that, with such hygiene, the divine twisted 
wood could retain its strength, and henceforth, softer 
than tinder, resist the voracious teeth of the viewless 
foes that assail it on all sides? The fungus oidium, 
the Milo-Diou , the phylloxera, and all the rest have a 
right to such easy prey. “ Let us give the vine a firm 
pith, a hard bark, and none of these creatures will bite 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


'207 


into it any more.” The theory is certainly luminous 
in its simplicity. 

Monsieur Honnorat, from motives of patriotism, 
objects to using American plants. Besides, they pro- 
duce poor wine. He means to propagate from the 
seeds of French grapes chosen. from the best vineyards. 
The angle of the garden, which is as warm as a hot- 
house, is already laid out in beds. It will require, 
perhaps, five or ten years before the seeds thus raised 
can be properly rooted. What does that matter ? The 
mother of days is not dead. 

Meanwhile, to soothe his impatience, Monsieur Hon- 
norat is directing a squad of peasants, whose mission 
is to take up carefully, without injuring the beard of 
the roots, in the valleys, under the thickets, every 
plant of vitis IdbrusccC * twining amid the boughs of 
pine or oak its flexible shoots loaded with grapes 
whose seeds are small and few. 

“ The wild vine is the true vine, and w T orth all the 
Jaquez in the world.” 

Afterwards, at great expense, the plants thus ob- 
tained are transplanted to a stony tract of land, un- 
tilled from time immemorial, of which Monsieur Hon- 
norat has discovered himself to be the owner. 

Excellent Monsieur Honnorat ! 

I have not been able to resist the temptation of 
teasing him a little about his methods. 

“ Pshaw !” he replied ; “ these are nothing but ex- 
periments ; for my triumph I depend upon the seeds.” 


* Wild grape-vine, 


208 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


Then, pointing to the hill-sides which were to be 
covered to the sea with his vines, he added, laughing 
his own hearty laugh : 

“ At any rate, whether the plan prospers or not, if 
the phylloxera wants to eat my plants it must order 
a set of new legs to climb so high.” 

One evening Monsieur Honnorat came in, dripping 
and chilled, having persisted, spite of the rain — a cold 
autumnal rain — in waiting to oversee his wild- vine 
planters. 

He found fault with the soup, though usually he 
had so good an appetite, and — a serious symptom — 
went back to his room without lighting his pipe. The 
next day he kept his bed, and Saladine became alarmed. 

“ 4 Gazan abed, Gazan dead , 5 55 she repeated, trying 
to hide her tears. 44 I’m not mistaken. This is the * 
third one in the house whose last toilet I have sorrow- 
fully made.” 

Alas, Saladine was right ! At the end of a week, 
spite of our nursing, Monsieur Honnorat died, calmly, 
almost painlessly. 

A few minutes before, very weak, but in possession 
of all his mental faculties, he gave me numerous direc- 
tions about the vines and jested with Norette. He 
did not complain, but it wearied him to remain quiet. 

He wanted something to drink, and, to our sur- 
prise, with no apparent transition, we perceived that 
he was delirious. He fancied himself a child, spoke 
of his mother, and reliving, in the flash of a vision, by- 
gone years, called for former friends, set off on distant 
voyages. 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


2011 



(l 

- 


Then he was silent. 
My hand, clasped in 
his, felt icy cold. 

“ Father, where are 
you ? Papa !” sobbed 
JSTorette, kneeling. 

The “ Priors ’’(peas- 
ants dressed like 
monks) have come 
for the coffin, and 
borne it — relieving 
one another — to the 


210 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


cliurcli and the cemetery. Abbe Sebe chanted the 
prayers. I followed with Skipper Ruf and Gan- 
teaume — who hastened to Puget-Maure at the sad 
tidings — Peu-Parle, and all the villagers. 

On our return I found Rorette, accompanied by 
Tardive, in the room where the three candles were 
burning. She had been unwilling to leave it. The 
sun shone through the wide-open window, caressing 
with the same ray the bed where Monsieur Honno- 
rat had just died and the pallid forehead of my wife, 
whose tearful eyes were nevertheless already radiant 
with the pride of maternal hopes. Whatever may be 
the excess of our grief, life protests against death, the 
woof of our joys ever mingles with that of our sor- 
rows ! Then, thinking of the dead man, who would 
never more see the sun, never know the grandson so 
dearly loved in imagination, I suddenly felt my cour- 
age vanish, and, though coming to console, I could 
only weep myself. 


LI 

noeette’s last seceet 


Peehaps, omitting to write these last pages, I might 
have stopped at the happy moment when, under the 
white cliffs of Aygues-Seches, Norette threw herself 
into my arms. 

But Monsieur Honnorat’s death is connected in a 
somewhat singular way with the story of the Golden 
Goat. 

“ Take good care of my "seeds !” said the worthy 
man almost as his last request, just before expiring, 
his mind still occupied with his hobby. 

These words, long forgotten, returned one day to 
my memory. February was drawing to a close, the 
flowers -were opening on the hill-sides, and bits of 
green turf were gleaming among the rocks, announ- 
cing the short, bewitching spring of Provence. 

While Norette, a devoted mother, was walking in 
the garden with the heir, I said to myself : “ Let us 
see where grandfather’s seeds are.” 

The seeds had not sprouted. Perhapis it might be 
necessary to give them a little air by stirring the 
earth in the nursery. 

So, for the first time, I went into a low vault, hob 


212 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


lawed under the foundations of my tower and pro- 
tected by a glass window, a sort of cellar aspiring to 
be a hot-house, where Monsieur Honnorat kept his 
tools. 

Slugs were crawling about there, and the walls ex- 
haled that odor of damp and musty vegetable-mould 
familiar to all amateur horticulturists. 

I meant only to get the little plough, but curiosity, 
half ironical, half tender, stopped me. 

Along the walls, on shelves, were rows of pack- 
ages labelled : “ Claret,” “ Muscat,” “ Double-seeded 
Greek ” — all the varieties Monsieur Honnorat had ex- 
pected to see grow and ripen on his estates of Puget- 
Maure. 

One of the packages, the one marked “ Double-seeded 
Greek,” seemed to be wrapped in parchment, and what 
w r as my surprise on opening it to recognize the yellow 
hue and faded letters of a page of the Gazan journal. 

Whence did it come, and who had torn the volume 
before the pious hecatomb made by Abbe Sebe at the 
request of Madame Honnorat Gazan? What ignorant 
hand? Saladine’s? Perhaps the page was the very 
one Madame Honnorat wished to keep, and ere she 
died made Norette tear out? 

At any rate, this is what the page, so miraculously 
preserved, contained : 

“And as, without reckoning the bloody quarrels 
fomented between kinsmen and brothers, this Golden 
Goat frequented only perilous places, wild regions, or 
precipices, whoever attempted by following it to gain 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


213 


the Saracen treasure of the Kings of Majorca, exposed 
himself to certain death. So, for a thousand years 
and more, no daughter, either of the Galfars or of 
the Gazans, or of any other branch of the family, from 
fear of the dangers to be incurred, would reveal any- 
thing touching the aforesaid treasures, neither to the 
man who married her nor to any one whom she loved. 

“ It is also certain that, in the time of King Kene 
of Anjou, the Lady Guiraude Gazan, being fiercely 
pressed on this subject by her husband, a very ex- 
travagant man and a great gambler, answered : 

“ £ Take my jewels and sell them if you want money ? 
but, spite of your evil life, I still love you far too 
much to place in your hands a secret that has already 
cost so many misfortunes.’ 

“And, her husband still urging her, after locking 
herself alone into her round room in the tower, she 
nobly, with a lofty courage, flung the talisman into the 
fire. This talisman was made of a fine silver bell, 
with a wooden collar like those worn by goats, the 
whole curiously wrought and covered with mysterious 
characters. 

“The bell did not melt, and was found afterwards 
in the ashes, but the collar having been burned, the 
treasure departed in smoke with it. For the inscrip- 
tion had been so carefully combined that half was 
under the bell and half over the collar, so that having 
one of the parts without the other was the same as 
having nothing. 

“ So,” the quaint document concluded, “ as the Lady 
Guiraude voluntarily lost the secret of the Goat, the 


214 


THE GOLDEN GOAT 


fate of the women in our family, says a proverb, is to 
keep their husbands poor because they love them too 
well.” 

Seeing me come out of the vault, through whose 
windows it was easy to watch me, Norette, who was 
still very sorrowful, began to smile. 

Why? Could I have been her dupe? Had she, 
from sheer feminine malice and to color our artless 
love-romance with a dim reflection of heroism,. simply 
amused herself with me in regard to the Golden Goat ? 

Many details now return to my memory — her smile, 
the discovery of the fragment of parchment in the 
exact spot where Norette knew very well I should 
find it some day, might make me suppose so. 

Yet no ! 

Norette never thought of deciphering these yellow 
pages ; she believed as sincerely as I in the treasure 
guarded by the Goat ; and we were both thoroughly 
in earnest when, on the day we went fishing for sea- 
urchins in the calanque of Aygues- Seelies, Norette, 
to be sure that I loved her, I, to prove that I loved 
Norette, renewed, by completing it, the sacrifice of 
the Lady Guiraude. 

However, everything is better as it is ; legends, like 
love-affairs, profit by retaining a shade of mystery. 


THE END. 



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Characterization is Miss Woolson’s forte. Her men and women 
are not mere puppets, but original, breathing, and finely contrasted 
creations. — Chicago Tribune. 

Miss Woolson is one of the few novelists of the day who know 
how to make conversation, how to individualize the speakers, liow 
to exclude rabid realism without falling into literary formality ; — 
N. T. Tribune. 

Constance Fenimore Woolson may easily become the novelist 
laureate. — Boston Globe. 

Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, 
and conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the develop- 
ment of a story is very remarkable. — Ijondon Life. 

Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox 
novelist, but strikes a new and richly loaded vein which, so far, is 
all her own ; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh 
sensation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleas- 
ant task of reading it is finished. The author’s lines must have 
fallen. to her in very pleasant places ; or she has, perhaps, within 
herself the wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so 
freely into all she writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate 
the moral tone of the day — a quality sadly wanting in novels of the 
time. — Whitehall Review, London. 


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lW~Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid , to any part of the 
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BY ELIZABETH B. CUSTER. 


FOLLOWING THE GUIDON. Illustrated, pp. xx., 369, 
Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. 

The story is a thrillingly interesting one, charmingly told. . . . Mrs. 
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hardly lay it down until it is finished. — Boston Traveller. 

An admirable book. Mrs. Custer was almost as good a soldier as 
her gallant husband, and her book breathes the true martial spirit.— St. 
Louis Republic. 

Mrs. Custer has the faculty of making her reader see and feel with 
her. . . . The whole country is indebted to Mrs, Custer for so faithfully 
depicting phases of a kind of army life now almost passed away. — 
Boston Advertiser . 

The book is crowded with the amusing and exciting details of a life 
strange indeed to those who have spent their time sitting tranquilly at 
home. Her observation is so quick, her descriptive powers so .pictu- 
resque, that the camp and the skirmish seem to live before the reader. 
— Springfield Republican. 

BOOTS AND SADDLES ; Or, Life in Dakota with Gen- 
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12 mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. 

A book of adventure is interesting reading, especially when it is all 
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fort, but it inheres in her narrative none the less, and as a consequence 
“these simple annals of our daily life,” as she calls them, are never 
dull nor uninteresting. — Evangelist, N. Y. 

We have no hesitation in saying that no better or more satisfactory 
life of General Custer could have been written. Indeed, we may as 
well speak the thought that is in us, and say plainly that we know of no 
biographical work anywhere which we count better than this. , . . It is 
enriched in every chapter with illustrative anecdotes and incidents, and 
here and there a little life story of pathetic interest is told as an episode. 
— N. Y. Commercial Advertiser ., 

Every member of a Western garrison will want to read this book-; 
every person in the East who is interested in Western life will want to 
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venture will be sure to get it. It is bound to have an army of readers 
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BEN-HUR: A TALK OF THE CHRIST. 

By Lew. Wallace. New Edition, pp. 552. 16mo, 

Cloth, $1 50. 


Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of 
this romance does not often appear in works of fiction. . . .. Some of Mr. 
Wallace’s writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes 
described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of 
an accomplished master of style. — N. Y. Times. 

Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at the 
beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and brilliant. . . . 
We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes ; we witness a sea- 
fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman galley, domestic in- 
teriors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the tribes of the desert; pal- 
aces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman youth, the houses of pious 
families of Israel. There is plenty of exciting incident; everything is ani- 
mated, vivid, and glowing. — N. Y. Tribune. 

From the opening of the volume to the very close the reader’s interest 
will be kept at the highest pitch, and the novel will be pronounced by all 
one of the greatest novels of the day. — Boston Post. 

It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and there 
is sufficient of Oriental customs, geograph}', nomenclature, etc., to greatly 
strengthen the semblance. — Boston Commonwealth. 

“Ben-Hur” is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. 
Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is laid, 
and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to realize the 
nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman life at 
Antioch at the time of our Saviour’s advent. — Examiner , N. Y. 

It is really Scripture history of Christ’s time clothed gracefully and deli- 
cately in the flowing and loose drapery of modern fiction. . , . Few late 
works of fiction excel it in genuine ability and interest. — N. Y. Graphic. 

One of the most remarkable and delightful books. It is as real and 
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ters of history. — Indianapolis Journal. 

The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with un- 
wonted interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional novel 
and romance. — Boston Journal. 


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